


Life Can Be The Worst Nightmare

by SilverShortyyy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2018-09-15 00:09:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9211250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverShortyyy/pseuds/SilverShortyyy
Summary: Trigger Warning: Possible traces of depression. — Being the hero of the War never meant he would be anything more than human; Harry Potter had nightmares all the time. But one night, Snape finds him in a Muggle bar but Snape is dead, but Snape is actually alive, and that night, Harry spends it in Snape's bed and finally, the nightmares are gone.





	1. Broken

The Boy Who Lived Again would never understand how he ended up in bed like this. Away from all his nightmares, yes, but void and empty and _in pain_ clawing for something he’ll never have.

Beside Ginny, he would always wake up in the middle of the night because of Sirius dying again, or Voldemort never having killed his parents that Halloween night only to _Crucio_ them before he killed Harry, or to Cedrick bringing him to King’s Cross only for everything to be set ablaze, voices of all the people who died hissing at Harry, cursing him, damning him, and shouting at him that he doesn’t deserve this, that he shouldn’t be alive.

Most of the time, Harry agrees.

Then he wakes up to flaming red hair and soft hazel eyes in the moonlight, caring hands coaxing him to wake up. Ginny’s sweet, thin lips would smile sadly and ask, “Nightmares?” and all Harry can do is nod before shutting his eyes again.

And every single time Harry closes his eyes again, he finds himself wishing that the next time he jolts awake from a nightmare, he’d see dark, greasy hair and dark, pained eyes, thin chapped lips in a frown while cold, thin fingers wrap around his waist. The moonlight would be enough, no words or faux smiles, just a wordless reassurance of ‘we’ll be okay’ at the forefront of all the pain and sorrow and fear, of all the regret and remorse and haunting.

Every single time Harry closes his eyes again, his back to Ginny, he wonders why and shuts those thoughts off and lulls himself to sleep.

One night, Harry had found himself in a pub. Drinking what, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he sat down and suddenly felt a shot glass, one with alcohol, and he downed it. The nightmares get so bad sometimes, sometimes it haunts him all day. Especially when it’s Fred and George’s birthday. Or when Sirius could’ve been there. Cedric’s father, when they pass by each other. Or sometimes it’s just bad, so bad, he’d have to get off work.

“No, Ron,” he tried once, “I’m fine.”

“No, Harry.” Ron had kept at it. “You’re not fine. And if I have to call on Minerva to make you go on a day off-”

Ron’s learning from Hermione.

But one day, it had gotten particularly bad and Harry found himself out of Wizarding England and in Muggle England, in a random pub off the corner of some street. He didn’t even think of getting home. He didn’t even know if he wanted to go home. He just tipped down shot after shot, shot after shot, shot after shot.

“Potter,” then Harry saw pained black eyes, steely and cold but pained deep inside, “what are you doing so far from home?” And Harry felt, between his fingers, greasy hair, long enough that it reached down the man’s shoulders.

The bite was long gone from the man’s voice, not even if he tried.

And it was a few more shots or a hundred more, maybe something in between, then Harry had discovered a room with peeling wallpaper, a mucky green with golden lions, and cold, long fingers sliding his coat off.

“... Settle you in.” They both reeked of alcohol. What they had drunk, Harry will never know.

Without thinking, Harry pulled the man against him and smashed their lips together, the cold night turning hot and so they tore off shirts and undercoats and pants, shoes and socks and underwear, until two flushed bodies moved against each other, both rather scrawny still. Harry kissed down the man’s chest, and the man let his fingers grasp Harry’s hair and trace mindless patterns on Harry’s biceps. Gasps, moans, needy groans filled the small space. Clothes strewn everywhere, the scent of alcohol and sex wrenching into every space available. Cocks furiously gliding, inserting, penetrating. Hot breaths, sweaty skin, humid air.

Harry felt the man closing his climax, so Harry quickened his pace, thrusting deeper and faster and rougher, fisting the man’s cock furiously. As the man reached his climax, Harry heard the man moan loudly, ever so loudly, one name: “Lily!”

It didn’t matter then; the name was just a trivial matter then.

When Harry wakes up later that night, he doesn’t wake up from a nightmare rendition of the War, nor does he wake up from a fantastical trip to hell; he doesn’t wake up to flaming red hair and gentle hazel eyes. No, when Harry wakes up, he wakes up to serenely closed eyes, though he knows that behind those pale lids are black eyes full of pain and remorse. And the night, oh the night, was empty of nightmares.

Such nights began happening weekly since then, then thrice every week, then five times every week, until the number of nights Harry spent at home varied drastically from the nights he spent in the run-down Muggle apartment that almost always reeked of alcohol and sex. Of sebum and semen. Of the Boy Who Lived Again and the Potions Master.

Sooner rather than later, the name the man moaned in his climax was no more trivial to Harry than World War II was in the Muggle world, and it began to strike at his heart. Days would pass, _nights_ would pass, and the man would still scream the same name.

Harry would never notice when it stops that last week.

When such nights ended and the mornings came, Harry would always wake up to an empty bed, not so much as a note left behind. Harry knew it was blind and stupid; he’s falling in love with the comfort, not the man. But if he was falling in love with the comfort, why couldn’t he find it anywhere else? Why did he look specifically for this man? Why, if he loved the comfort, could he not have found it elsewhere?

The Boy Who Lived Again looks up at the ceiling of Severus Snape’s Muggle apartment. The man had gone into hiding after the Wars, letting everyone think he was dead, and Harry was only lucky to have found him that night in the Muggle pub.

No. He was lucky Snape found him. Snape. No. Severus.

The man beside him began to breathe irregularly again, and Harry knew when the man drew a breath asleep or awake.

“Severus,” no, Snape. Because Snape never answered to his first name, not with Harry Potter. “Do you care for my company?”

The man didn’t answer. Harry could feel Snape’s breathing quicken, becoming more erratic and more irregular.

“Severus,” Harry began again, because Snape was his professor. This wasn’t his professor. At least, not anymore. “Would you cry for me if I left?”

The man didn’t answer again. Harry felt a tear threaten to slide off his cheek, so he choked down a sob and asked once more.

“Severus,” Harry’s hands clutch at the sheets. _He’ll answer this time. I know it._ Because Harry knows he needed comfort from this man specifically, for a reason. “Do you want me to stay?”

Severus Snape never uttered a word.

That night, the Boy Who Lived Again let it all pass, shutting his eyes against the tears that burst on their own. He shut his eyes, willing himself to forget getting his heartbroken yet again, and at the break of dawn, he dressed up and left, promising never to come back, never hearing the silent sob of the man he left in his wake.

Broken. Broken.

But it’ll be the last time he gets used, he thinks. The last time.

So when Harry wakes up in the middle of the night, he screams and kicks and cries, and the nightmares have come back but he promises never to reach for black, pained eyes or greasy black hair every again; never to grasp for long, potion-stained fingers to keep him grounded. No. Because it’ll be the last time that night, and he won’t ever come back again.


	2. Deserted

Severus Snape was never able to get even a wink of sleep that night.

Had he tried, he knew he would have cried in his sleep. Broken down, crumbled into bits and pieces. He would awaken to tears streaming down his cheeks, burning pathways down his skin while two strong arms held him close.

No. He did not need strong arms. He did not need strong arms that belonged to someone else.

So that night, Severus Snape had listened. Listened intently, carefully, taking note of every last tone, of every last breath, feeling every last rise and fall of the body beside him, the body that fell asleep in painful inhales and shaky exhales, and Severus couldn’t even bring himself to look.

One look, he knows, would send him falling apart.

No. He couldn’t let himself get to that. The boy—man, he reminds himself, because Harry Potter hasn’t been a boy since the fall of the Dark Lord—belonged to someone else. Wore the golden mark of someone else around his finger, possibly with lips having been touched every day by the one who owns him.

Severus is just a distraction. A distraction from fairy tale land, an obstruction from happily ever after. So when Harry had asked, he didn’t answer; no good would come of it.

For once, Severus Snape vouched for Harry’s well being with not an ounce of disgust. No, Severus knew why he wanted Harry to be happy this time. Safe from harm, not hurt, and happy.

That reason he would never say.

So he listened, closely, to every breath, every squeak at every movement; Severus felt the bed lighten in the middle when Harry sat at the other end of the bed, and felt it lighten even more when he stood up; Severus heard the rustle of clothing, sliding onto skin he wished he could taste one last time, caress for one last night, own one last time; Severus listened to every minute creak of the floorboards, every creak of the door; Severus memorized every click of the lock, the careful way Harry had made his way out and closed the door so as not to wake Severus up, even when they both knew Severus hadn’t been asleep when Harry left.

And when Harry’s footsteps faded into the hustle and bustle of the city, Severus burned into his memory the painful silence that followed, the cold emptiness beside him that bit at his skin the way Harry’s breath used to caress him.

He tried. Severus tried. Not to cry, not to break down, not to fall apart.

But as soon as he drew in a slow, shaky breath, his eyes gave in and the tears flowed, his sobs echoing throughout the small Muggle flat he had gotten for himself.

Golden lions on a green background. Severus had always known why he wanted this room out of all the rooms. Because it was the only one with golden lions on a green background for wallpaper.

Now the golden lions seemed a little more faded, a little less prominent, and the green looked lonely as ever.

Severus had tried to silence his sobs, tried to quiet down his cries. to no avail. He could do nothing else but curl up into a ball and wait for the tears to cease. Wait, and feel the painful ache in his heart as if it had been ripped away feom him and slowly, slowly, he had to force himself to breathe.

He couldn’t. How could he, when the one person he needed to breathe was gone?

So he waited for the sobs to cease, for the tears to stop flowing, for the painful silence to return that was completely and utterly void of one Harry Potter. Severus forced himself not to try and remember every shaky, anticipating breath that Harry drew in those nights, nails digging into his back and leaving half-moon marks embedded with ecstasy. Severus forced himself away from those thoughts of such wonderful nights, beautiful nights, nights he wished he didn’t have to leave.

But he had to. He always had to. People like him had no happy endings.

So when the sobs had ceased and the tears had stopped, Severus picked himself up and put on a bathrobe, picked up his clothes and loaded all his belongings in a bag. If he left, Harry won’t ever find him again. Not that the brat would ever think to come back, and hopefully he wouldn’t, but if that ever came, Harry won’t ever find him. If he stayed, if Severus Snape stayed in this flat and waited for someone who would never come, he would not only cause himself delay in a fruitless life but, if Harry would actually come back, would provide a truth that Severus tried so hard to take away.

So, at the sight of the first night star twinkling miles away from the horizon, Severus left the flat, bag in hand, his wand at the deepest crevices of his luggage.

Never again, he thought, will he ever come back.

Three months pass, and Severus Snape prides himself to have never returned where he longed to come back.

* * *

 

Under sedative, Harry had been put unconscious again for the fifth time this week, maybe for the twenty-fifth time this month.

“Ginny!” A man with flaming red curls jogs to a woman with flaming red hair and soft hazel eyes, a golden band around the woman’s ring finger. “What happened this time?”

The woman with flaming red hair and soft hazel eyes, Ginny Potter, replies to her brother with worry and fear prevalent in her eyes.

“He was screaming about _him_ again. Not being able to stop _him_. Letting him die. I thought it was different from yesterday and the day before, but it’s the same thing.”

Harry Potter, for the past three months, had begun getting admitted to the hospital almost nightly, He would always wake up in the middle of the night kicking, screaming, crying because of a nightmare, and though this wasn’t the first time he had nightmares about the Second Wizarding War, the nightmares came worse this time around.

Why this was, his wife and two best friends could never figure out why.

The man with flaming red curls, Ron Weasley, and his wife, Hermione Weasley. are Harry’s best friends. Ginny Potter, Ron’s sister, is Harry’s wife. And their visits to the hospital have been getting more and more frequent, as Harry’s episodes became more and more regular.

Hermione approaches the two who look worriedly into the hospital room beyond them. As a student, Hermione had always known what to do, even if it meant breaking rules and risking their. It was as if she always had the world’s knowledge and wisdom in the palm of her hands, the right information always in her reach at the right time.

These days she is always at a loss when it comes to Harry.

“What was it about this time?” Hermione asks the two, and although Ron had been hesitant at first, he now said Voldemort’s name without a wince, as Harry had been able to persuade him before.

“Voldemort murdering someone. Same as yesterday and the day before that, except he still hasn’t said a name.”

Hermione turns to Ginny, a look of urgency, of helplessness, on her face.

“Are you sure he says nothing more?”

“I’ve told you everything, ‘Mione. And no matter how much I think, he’s been giving no signs as to who it might be.”

Hermione frowns in disappointment, at a loss for what to do. They’ve hit another dead end, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Harry hadn’t gone rogue in his sleep like this since the war ended, and that had been when everyone else was having horrible nightmares and screams were always piercing the terror-filled nights.

Yes, Voldemort was gone. But the war itself was a nightmare, playing on replay over and over again, and it took nearly three years before Harry stopped assaulting anyone who tried to wake him during an episode with an unconscious wandless and wordless spell.

They thought maybe Ginny’s absence for two months had triggered it, though Ginny had been out for two months before and Harry hadn’t relapsed like this. Everything made no sense, and Harry never said a thing, always blamed it on stress and tiredness.

Ron tells Ginny to go home for a while, to get some rest and some clothes in case Harry needs to stay longer, and Ginny goes off to ride on George’s broom behind George since they all agreed Ginny might not be safe for Apparating or Floo powder. Hermione takes Ron’s hand after they see Ginny and George off, shoulders slouched and tired and worried, both making their way into Harry’s room where they can’t help but stare at the man in the bed and remember all they’ve been through.

Hermione guesses that was all too much after all: Harry’s parents were murdered and he had to live with an abusive aunt, uncle, and cousin for the first eleven years of his life; he had to escape his parents’ murderer—who just so happened to want him dead as well—nearly every year he had in Hogwarts, going through things no normal eleven-year-old should be going through; he watched his Godfather die at fifteen and fought in a war at seventeen; nearly got his soul sucked out more than twice at thirteen; faced death so many times since he was eleven, that many people would think he’s some fantastic hero for surviving that many times; and Harry was always under the pressure to be perfect, flawless, the hero they had built him up to be that never made room for him to be human.

Ron just looks and wonders what went wrong. What they should have never done. What he could do to save his best friend from all this pain he never asked for. Ron looks, and he sees not the person he had been jealous of, but normal, average Harry; not much good at much things like Hermione, though not as bad as Neville, but also good at particular things like Defence Against the Dark Arts (and Ron shudders when it strikes him why) and Quidditch. Ron wonders, what could they have done to save Harry the trouble. Could they have killed Voldemort early on? What charm could they have used so Harry wouldn’t have to go through seventeen years of Hell? Was there anyway out at all?

They both look, and the beep of the machines fill the silence in the air like a melody that announces Harry’s alive. Asleep, unconscious, but alive. Ron and Hermione remind themselves there was never anything they could do, because the events of time were out of all their hands, and not even Dumbledore could have stopped it had he known how.

Harry looks as if to sleep soundly, but in the recesses of his mind, Ron and Hermione knew he was fighting Voldemort off again, trying to keep him from killing someone, but failing over, and over, and over again.


	3. Empty

When Harry wakes up, he doesn’t hear the rhythmic beeps that record his heartbeat, nor see the white of the ceiling and walls. He doesn’t feel the many things attached to him nor taste antiseptic in the air. No, he doesn’t even realize that Ginny or Ron or Hermione are around him.

When Harry wakes up, he feels a reverberating ache like a bell struck, as if his heart was cut open and let to bleed. He doesn’t hear how Ron tries to tell Ginny he’ll be okay, that Harry just needs rest, because what Harry hears is the last of the shaky breaths Severus took before Harry left the flat with muck green and golden lion wallpaper. He doesn’t see the head of flaming red hair that sits beside him, worried hazel eyes burning into him, because what Harry sees is deep black eyes drowning in remorse and _pain_ , deep black eyes like maelstroms in the dark of night in that same kind of chaotic blur, wreaking havoc where they are welcome and Harry remembers freely letting those deep black eyes drown him, intoxicate him, take him over completely.

Harry doesn’t feel the hand gripping his own, because he feels the sweat and the skin and the tears, the warm caress of lips down his back and how fearful lips seized his every single time, shaking in barely conceived confidence in the midst of nervousness and anxiety. He doesn’t taste the air now slightly less of antiseptic and a little more of treacle tart and woody brooms and flowers, because he tastes bitterness and old shoes in the air, grease mixing in with sweat dripping off shoulder-lenght hair and sliding on sallow skin.

Harry doesn’t realize that at the foot of his bed, his two best friends watch him and wait for him to say something, and that beside him his wife holds onto his hand as if to coax him back to them. Harry doesn’t realize any of this, because what he realizes is that he made a mistake that night, that he shouldn’t have left, that he should have stayed and held Severus even if Severus never spoke.

And at that realization, Harry lets a stray tear fall, and the ache in his heart grows more and more painful as if trying to push away all the air in his lungs.

“Harry!”

“Harry, you’re awake!”

 _Yes I am,_ Harry thinks, _but I wish I could just keep dreaming of him instead._

A mistake. A huge mistake. Had he never left, would any of this be happening?

Any answer that is contrary to his thoughts made his painful heart ache even more, and as much as he wanted to wallow in his despair and loneliness (and what a word to describe him, Harry Potter, who could have anything if he just asked for it), he had to put on a brave face once again. The pain would have to wait for another night, when Ginny’s gone and he can spend another night without suspicion in the flat with muck green and golden lion wallpaper.

Harry falls back asleep after a weak smile and a mumbled “Yeah?” with all the faux happiness he could muster. After that, Harry feels all the tests running, spells running through his veins to test his vitals and statistics and all other important things.

Before he could even spare one more thought on Severus Snape, he had been released from St. Mungo’s and on he would be, going back home on Ron’s broom.

The girls had Apparated somewhere, but Ron said that Harry probably shouldn’t do much magic as of the moment; anything could make him queasy, and Harry reckoned that it was probably true.

Only flying could do the trick.

Flying.

_Harry had been eleven. And the youngest Seeker any of the Hogwarts Quidditch teams have seen in well over a century._

_Something had manipulated his broom so he would fall off, and he nearly did as he could only hold on with his grip of one hand on his broom. Just a little more, and he would’ve fallen a good fifty (maybe) feet off the ground._

_Hermione had saved him from the close call, but it would’ve been closer had a certain greasy haired man not muttered a counter curse to keep him on his broom._

_Severus had saved him for the first time, that time_.

“I know I probably shouldn’t ask this,” Ron starts, slowly lifting the broom to zoom over the clouds, “and ‘Mione has told me lots of time to keep my mouth shut about it from you, but I need to ask you.”

“Alright, go on.” Harry’s grip on the broom began to loosen as they surfaced over the clouds, the sun on the clear horizon.

“Whose death keeps replaying in your head?”

Without skipping a beat, Harry replies, “Snape.”

 _Severus_ , he tells himself, but they don’t know anything, and maybe it should stay that way.

They both become silent for a while, Harry admiring the view and trying to keep his thoughts out of the dark while Ron probes in his mind, thinking and looking and probably wondering why.

“Why?” Ron finally asks, their shoes skimming the clouds.

Harry watches the clouds part ever so slightly, as if it was water he’s skidding the tips of his shoes on.

“I don’t know.” _Because there is every reason and I don’t know which one is the real one._

“You haven’t had it this bad since after the War.”

“I know.” _And he’d been dead then_. Or at least I thought he was.

“So what made it?”

“I don’t know.” And Harry knows Ron knows he’s lying, but neither spoke of it, and soon they had descended and plunged into the clouds, the lands beneath the clouds showing themselves in its emerald glory.

Harry wonders if Severus would like flying on a broomstick with him like this, watching the view and all the people, and Harry thinks if he’d try it, they should probably do it at night, because the night would be a better time to go sightseeing, wouldn’t it?

Harry just smiles to thank Ron when they land in the Potter backyard, Harry immediately missing the wind carrying his feet.

“I bet Ginny’s waiting inside.” Ron faces away, to leave and fly away on his broom. “Don’t keep her waiting, why don’t you?”

And with that, Ron speeds away, and Harry turns around to go inside their house.

Harry would never really want to admit it to himself, but he can see it in Ginny’s eyes; Ginny knows there’s something going on behind his bright green eyes, and she might feel that he’s feeling his heart bleed and ache, not like it’s supposed to when his wife’s right there.

“Ginny.” Harry tries to say with longing and conviction, but he falls short at the sight of her hazel eyes. Lying to her; Harry just can’t do that.

So he presses their lips together to try and silence the storm of thoughts they both have, though they both know the storm can never be silenced. It only gets stronger when tried to be tamed.

Harry moves around to grab a glass of cold water. Ginny reaches for a glass in the cupboard and Harry gets a pitcher from the fridge.

“How bad was it?” Harry asks as Ginny sets down the glass and he fills it up, setting the pitcher aside and taking a gulp.

“Pretty bad,” Ginny says, and her voice seems to echo in the too-big house though her voice is close to a whisper. “You nearly _accio_ -ed Fireball if I hadn’t pulled your hand down.”

The giggle on Ginny’s lips never reaches her eyes. Harry hates that he’s the reason why.

“Good thing I have you, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” Harry tries to ignore how Ginny’s eyes reflect the sad smile playing on her lips, but he can never hide away from the painful tone her voice becomes, soft but so, so painful. “You do.”

* * *

That night, Harry had only had his eyes closed for sleep. Both scared to fall asleep and simply unable to get lulled into slumber, Harry settled for listening to Ginny’s breathing beside him, the rustle of the leaves and the soft hum of the wind. Unknowingly, Harry had fallen asleep, though only lightly, because he had not slept deep enough to dream, but slept deep enough to have not noticed Ginny get out of bed.

She usually shook him awake before she so much as sat at the edge of the bed.

When Harry decided that it was time for him to get up, Ginny had already, soundlessly, left the house with a simple note on the fridge.

> _Don't forget to take your meds._
> 
> _\- Gin_

Harry would never forget to take his meds. Especially not now.

Making his way to make tea and finding Ginny’s freshly made breakfast for him, he set down to eat, thankful for the eventless night though still with a void ache in his chest. As he’d have one day off, Harry thought of trying to get back in shape for work in the remaining hours of the day. He finished his tea and meal and magicked the plates to wash themselves as he made his way up to take a bath.

Read a book maybe? Harry may not enjoy reading as much as Hermione did, but he liked it every now and then. But what would he read? Harry skimmed through every title he knew in his and Ginny’s home library, just to find his thoughts hovering over a book of potions, the one with _“This book is property of the Half-Blood Prince”_ on it.

Spitting out the toothpaste, Harry shook his head. Okay then, maybe not reading.

What about working out then? Harry turns on the shower head to warm water, and praises Merlin for the steam that rose and caressed his skin. Oh, it felt good. The heat felt just like nights in the muck green and golden lion wallpaper flat, the steam hot as Severus’ kisses.

Harry shakes his head. If he works out, he’ll need to take a bath again. He can’t risk remembering those nights twice in one day; his heart already beat a little too heavily for his liking.

Then maybe… Gardening?

A bit of shampoo squeezes itself between Harry’s eyelids, and Harry all but clambers forward to get the painful sensation out of his eyes.

No, he can’t garden. He might as well feed the plants Draught of Living Death while he’s at it.

_The ingredients Snape first asked me about were ingredients for the Draught of Living Death._

Harry slams his fist onto the wet marble beside him.

Everything, everywhere, no matter what he tries thinking of. It always, always, always found its way back to Severus Snape. Might he just be thinking about breakfast and tea or the night sky, and still Severus Snape invades his mind. Harry leans his head back on the bathroom wall and lets the water skid down his bare chest.

He knows he shouldn’t. But as Professor S. Snape has proven, you can never stop Harry Potter from doing what Harry Potter wants—and as Harry has come to learn—even if you are Harry Potter himself.

When Harry steps out of the shower, his eyes are bright and with renewed determination. He knows what he’ll be doing today, and whatever the consequences may be, he didn’t care.

 

Harry made his way into Muggle Britain, and soon enough, at the door of the flat owned by Severus Snape. Everything's a blur in between, as it is in every night they had spent. With his heart plummeting down and his blood pulsing through his ears, he brings up enough courage to knock on the door.

 _Knock, knock, knock_. Harry retrieves his quivering hand from its rap at the wood of the foor, ears peeled and taking note of any slight bit of sound from the other side of the door.

Harry expects a rustle of clothing and maybe a pushed back chair, or a shatter of china on the other side of the door. And he waits on baited breath, for anything, anything at all, but several seconds turn into a minute, and still what Harry heard is the same.

Silence.

Severus hadn’t left, had he? No, that’s impossible. Besides, where could Severus possibly go?

_Where **can** a supposedly dead man go to?_

Harry didn’t want to think of the possibilities.

So he braves himself, turned the doorknob, and pushes open the door.

It’s unlocked. Severus never left his door unlocked.

“Severus?” Harry calls out into the wind. His voice comes back to him with not so much as a muffled creaking floorboard.

“Severus?” At the table by the window, there had always been a vase of flowers. If Harry’s right, those flowers were asphodels, but dwelling too much on it makes his heart hurt a little more every time. “Severus?” Harry pushes open the bedroom door slightly, just a crack, to see that not even the bed had evidence of use.

Harry pushes the bedroom door all the way, and lets his fears get validated.

Empty. It’s completely and utterly empty. Except for one note on red paper and gold ink.

Everything, _everything_ in the flat that used to be there, is gone. Severus Snape had left. And that man being the smart ass bitch he is, he had left something for Harry that Harry would have done anything to trade so he could have the man who wrote it.

> _I’ve left, Harry Potter. Don’t go looking for me._
> 
> _\- S.S._


	4. Play-Pretend

Harry could hear it. Harry could hear his heart breaking apart, all hope lost and all dreams gone.

It’s impossible for him to deny it. For the past few months he had hoped Severus would be waiting, patiently every night though in pain, for Harry to come back and stumble upon the door once again. Maybe Harry will come and for good this time, leaving the wizarding world for peace and quiet.

But how was Harry so naive?

Severus Snape is a grown man, much more grown than Harry; it shouldn’t have come as a shock that he thought it to be better to leave.

Someone might discover he faked his death, and drag him back to the wizarding world. Someone might find him and lock him in Azkaban. Someone might find him and, simply put, destroy Severus’ peace and quiet, something Harry’s sure Severus had come to love after years of pretending not to exist.

So why did Harry think even the tiniest bit that Severus would stay?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t hear himself thinking. He could hear himself drawing in raspy breaths, hand shaking as he takes the note in his hands.

A tear dropped onto the red paper with immaculate golden writing. Never had Harry known that nine words could crush a heart so immensely.

He pulls the note in, curling into himself, finding himself lying down on the floor that had once carried the weight of a man he loved, of a man he cares for, that once creaked under the weight of a man that had potion-stained fingers and greasy black hair.

The flat is empty. All his stuff, gone. Don’t look for him? How is Harry not going to _look for him_? Not a clue to where the man had gone, Harry would have nowhere to start. But Harry would never let that stop him, not when he feels like the sheer pain in his heart could be enough to look for Severus in a heartbeat.

A heartbeat. Each one feels like a Cruciatus curse ten times over.

His heart feels hollow when he hears the familiar squeak of the bed, and Harry feels his chest heave when he catches the faintest scent of Severus Snape on the pillow that Harry now rests his head on. So faint, so minute, that had Harry not been paying attention he would have never caught it, but everything in the moment is Severus.

The peeling wallpaper, the muck green and the golden lions; the scent of the pillows and the feel of the sheets, the table that used to hold keys and the drawer that used to be locked with a wand secured inside; the absence of warmth on such a cold night, the gasps in the darkness.

Harry feels like the note in his hand is Severus’ hand gripping at him, telling him not to let go, and he can nearly feel Severus’ soft lips sliding up his back while planting soft kisses down his spine. Severus’ fingers would make careful work of him; soft skin against soft skin, slim fingers fitting into every curve and crevice of Harry’s body.

Severus’ warm breath, on Harry’s lips. And the painful, passionate, sweet, and toxic kisses they shared, the kisses Harry will never forget, the kisses Harry will never stop craving until his heart turns him into a quivering mess.

His tears soak the pillow, and he clutches the note in his hand to his heart. It hurts, the way his heart wrenches, the way his heart twists and weighs down on him, heaving his chest upward and downward and enlarging enough so his lungs don’t have room to breathe. He wishes only for his solace to be there, to see deep black eyes when he opens his emerald ones, to drown in pain and remorse in those maelstroms.

But even when his tears dry, even before a fresh wave comes again, all Harry sees when he opens his eyes are muck green walls with golden lions. No greasy hair, no sallow skin, no thin body in front of him nor painful black maelstrom eyes watching him.

Harry doesn’t know if he falls asleep, because every time he finds himself thinking it was all just a dream, the painful truth comes to him when he opens his eyes that it—all this, _everything_ —is, indeed, very real.

‘ _I’ve left, Harry Potter. Don’t go looking for me._ ’

Complete and utter _bullshit_!

Harry shudders in the cold of the bed, cold without the feel of Severus's body against his, and wonders where the man could have gone, wonders if he can find Severus, wonders if he could just close his eyes again, then maybe, maybe he’ll see Severus one last time.

Harry stays curled up on the bed for what seems like an entire day, his eyes stinging all the while. The note in his hand makes it all bearable: the pain, the desertion, the abandonment, the _loneliness_. But at the same time, the note makes Harry feel all the more on the verge of another bout of crying, never ending, over and over again for a person who might have never cared about him at all.

Harry lets out a sob, but no tears come out, and maybe it’s because he had cried enough. But Harry doesn’t care why he’s only wracked with sobs and hiccups, with not one tear streaming down his red cheeks, because the only reason why he would have cared at all is gone.

* * *

With his hood over his head, he looks down on his outfit only to grimace. He would do anything to switch back to black. Black, black, and black. It’s the only color that suits him, what with warm colors being too happy and cool colors having too much—well, color.

But Severus looks down and pretends to be interested in his dark blue and black shoes for a different reason. If he were to look up, and around the city lit up by city sounds and starlight, he’d see couples in love, some snuggling on a bench and some playfully chasing each other, some just staring into each other and some, like the one he saw earlier, looking painfully like what Severus would have given anything for.

Upon reaching his frequented coffee shop, he takes his eyes off his shoes and digs in his pocket for some Muggle money he had gotten at some point. The shop isn’t exactly luxurious, and Severus wouldn’t be caught dead in here by a wizard. But, he thinks, no Muggle knows him, so he gives himself the benefit of the doubt and lets himself frequent the shop. It’s small with a few tables outside and a few inside, a counter to buy drinks and snacks on the left, booths at the right. Pushing open the door, a small bell would sound to alert the barista a customer has come in, and a teenage boy with a scrunched up face would usually be leaning against the wall in the far left corner with earplugs in his ears.

“What can I do for ya, Paul?” The barista says to Severus, and Severus approaches the counter with his money in his hand.

“The usual.” Severus replies calmly, the bite in his voice long gone. He had learned to take it away, to keep it stuffed in an unreachable place so he would never be recognized, so he doesn't have to worry about someone spotting him as Severus Snape, Potions Master and Ex-Death Eater. Here, he’s just Paul Dubois, a man well into his middle ages and single as can be.

“Alrighty, then.” The barista turns away and goes over to the kitchens. “Five minutes.”

“Alright.”

Severus sits in the nearest booth from the counter, letting his eyes wander. He scans the coffee shop one last time to make sure no one knew him there, his back turned from the entrance of glass windows and a glass door in case someone remembered his face and would rush in to say “Oh Snape, didn’t know you actually wore color.”

Then again, he would be fortunate if that’s all they said.

At the corner booth, Severus sees a woman with bright green eyes and long, wavy black hair, drinking her coffee contentedly in the arms of her beloved. Her girlfriend has untameable hair, cut so that it’s longer at the back and cupping her face at the front. The woman’s girlfriend has dark, dark eyes; so dark, their brown could be mistaken for black.

Bright green stares into dark brown, and Severus would have to be blind not to see how much love they hold for each other, and thank God Severus had learned to be numb lest he feels the pang in his heart once again. The scene looks much too familiar, much too close to what Severus wishes he could have.

Except he wishes something not between two women, but between two men.

Outside, Severus had seen a woman and a man with wedding bands, happy and giggling and reminding him painfully of Lily and James, but that yearning feels a little more distant to Severus that this.

“Paul!” Severus hears the barista come out from the kitchens, and Severus snaps his head away from the couple as if to pretend he was never looking.

He wishes he hadn’t looked, anyway.

Severus stands up and offers a warm smile to the barista, and walks out the shop with a warm cup in his hands. He takes a sip, and relishes the hot stream that burns his throat.

This way, he can pretend he’s been crying himself hoarse, so as not to let the tears fall.

In an orange hoodie and green cargo pants, Severus makes his way back to his current home in dark blue and black sneakers, trying once again to ignore the many happy couples around him. He tries not to sneer, because he would just be lying to himself if he said the couples irritate him. He walks straight off, and focuses on the cup in his hands and the liquid that burns down his throat, and the pain seems to recede as he makes his way home.

Home. Harry Potter is home.

Severus shakes his head, walking a little faster, hoping to reach his home so he could recline in his chair and read a Muggle book, letting the memories in his mind lay back and letting Muggle fantasies replace them.

* * *

Sooner rather than later, Harry got himself back to normal. He doesn’t exactly know how, but he did. Soon enough, he had become Ginny’s husband again, Ron’s best friend and co-Auror, Hermione’s best friend and way into Ron’s head when the two were fighting, and everyone’s hero. Of course, there are some people who still hate him, like probably Lucius Malfoy, but his list of enemies have gotten shorter and shorter by the year, and now it could probably fit a small memo pad paper.

The nightmares had tempered, the hospitalizations had ceased, and in the bottom of his Hogwarts trunk, he hid Severus’ note in the folds of the Invisibility Cloak.

He’d rather Ginny not find it. She seems to have convinced herself to play pretend as well, because Harry knows the truth in those hazel eyes.

So life goes on, as it did and as it does, and as it should.

Except that Harry comes back to the flat every now and then, having rented it and paying for it in a Muggle bank where he deposited some earnings of his, from Galleons to pounds. Harry would scan the place, memorizing it up to the finest detail, taking note of anything that could lead him to Severus.

Somehow, he’ll find Severus. Somehow, the days of play pretend will end.

 _But then what?_ Was the thought that always plagued Harry’s mind. _It’s not like this life can be thrown away just like that._

And Harry knows he’d have to answer that question at some point, though he chooses not to think about it when he tells himself he doesn’t have to yet. Cross the bridge when he gets there, and so on. Then he goes back to prying open loose floorboards or checking secret compartments in the drawers.

He might have gone through the entire flat thrice by now, discovering nothing of Severus’ but discovering instead the top 10 places that dust can collect in. Harry thinks he’ll definitely need that knowledge, as if he couldn’t just magically sweep every spec of dust away.

Like the last times, Harry stands up and leaves through the door, locking it as he had done many times and coming back to Wizarding Britain sooner rather than later.

Then he goes back to pretending, and his life goes on.

How was he to find Severus when he didn’t know where to start? Harry doubts Severus would have kept his name, so it’s not like Harry could search the world for ‘Severus Snape’ and find a profile of where the man currently lives. Severus Snape isn’t even supposed to exist anymore, because the Potions Master shouldn’t have survived Nagini’s Many Bites Of Death and Venom. Except Snape was a _Potions Master_. Not to mention wizard extraordinaire. But everyone thinks he’s dead, so Severus Snape isn’t really in existence.

Except he is.

And Harry couldn’t think of one way to look for a man who’d be impossible to find.

So he keeps searching: the flat, Severus’ old home, the things Severus had given to Harry in his will, even the Potions professor’s chambers when it was uninhabited as well as the potion ingredients supply place. Harry keeps searching and searching, knowing something, _something_ will turn up eventually, just hiding in plain sight.

But for the meantime he needs to keep pretending. That he is Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived Again and Again, happy with his life now, rather than Harry, Boy Who Lost Someone He Can Say He Loves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advanced for late updates. Still though, thank you for reading!


	5. Harry

Harry wakes up to hazel eyes staring at him fondly. From under the sheets, he catches himself befuddled; why are there a pair of hazel eyes staring at him? Hazel—bright and shining with joyful admiration—with a golden glaze of honey sunlight?

Then he remembers with a pang to his chest. It feels like someone steps on his heart and shrinks his lungs into the size of a snitch.

Black eyes—onyx with a shine of painful love and barely concealed guilt—don’t exist at his bedside on Sunday morning.

Nor black hair, nor sallow skin, nor a hooked nose; there are only hazel eyes with a golden sunlit glaze, flaming red hair, and endearing, red freckles.

“Good morning, Harry.” Ginny whispers to him, happiness bursting forth into him like light peeking through the curtains.

But he doesn’t feel the warmth. All he feels is a void emptiness, as if his heart was pulled out of his chest and his lungs crushed by bricks as if to keep him from breathing. He forces a smile that he hopes convinces her, because if she’s acting she’s doing a really good job at it and he can’t see through her, not in this moment.

“G’morning, Gin.” Harry breathes, trying to sound affectionate as he rolls over and plants a kiss to her temple.

Her skin feels so warm beneath his lips. His lips feel so cold on her skin.

“So,” she asks when he pulls away, emerald staring into hazel, and if Ginny _is_ acting, she still is. Harry couldn’t see even a crack in the façade, and he wants to praise her for being so good at this. “What do we do on a wonderful Sunday like this?”

Harry tries to forget where his dreams had taken him. But the resurgence of the memory simply struck harder on his already painful heart.

He hopes the pain doesn’t show on his eyes. If Ginny sees it, she shows nothing.

“Well,” Harry says, arms around Ginny’s waist and snug deep in the covers. “We could stay longer in bed, have a lazy day?”

He smiles hopefully. Harry loves lazy days.

But Ginny, being the wife she is, always refuses Harry his wishes.

“You need to exercise!” She pulls him up to stand on the bed, the covers flying off and resting on a heap at the edge of the bed. “You can’t be an Auror and have a beer belly!” Harry concedes and lets her pull him up, slouching onto her shoulders and relishing in the feel of her red hair tickling his nose.

 _But it isn’t his hair_ , a small voice says, _it’s red not black and greasy_.

Harry’s determined to ignore that voice for as long as possible.

“But Ginny, it’s Sunday!” Harry whines lovingly, nuzzling his nose into the crook of Ginny’s neck. He breathes in her flowery scent and lets his hands rest on her waist, fingers twisting her nightgown. “Can’t you let me off for one day?”

Ginny giggles, and Harry loves the sound of it. Harry pulls his head to face hers and smiles sleepily at her. She loves him in the morning, groggy and sleepy and lazy, his hair messier than usual as if a storm combed through it when he was asleep. He loves seeing the sparkle in her eyes and hearing the lightness of her giggle, the glow she has only on mornings with that cute little smile that shines through him.

She’s so warm, so beautiful, so _perfect_. Sometimes Harry wonders how he got her at all.

Ginny bites her lip as if to think. Her eyes avert from his, her hazel eyes turned golden in the Sunday morning sunlight. She looks so beautiful like this; life is almost always a dream with her.

Harry grabs her hips and pulls her close to him, their bodies pressed against each other. With a smirk playing on her lips, she rests her palms on his chest with her eyes blazing so lasciviously.

“Fine then, Harry. Let’s exercise together.” With a giggle, Harry pulls Ginny down back to bed, his lips molding onto hers as his body fits onto every curve of hers. Her hands slide down his body and sends him shivering, shuddering, anticipating every touch.

 _But she’s not him_.

He tries to get a head of black hair out of his mind, but those black eyes are always watching him when Harry closes his eyes. Staring at him, glaring at him. Harry pretends not to think and he feels Ginny pretend not to feel him thinking, and they both writhe in the sheets in mock ecstasy.

The sun shines through a gap in the curtains on a Sunday morning, and when Ginny and Harry drift off back to sleep, Harry falls asleep to the thought of a thin body on top of his, raven black hair curtains at either side of their faces as cock rubs against cock, and when Harry comes, he comes at the feel of soft lips on him, and rough, calloused hands kneading his hot skin.

 

* * *

 

When Harry gets up, the space beside him is empty. The sheets are pulled back and the creases show someone had sat at the edge of the bed.

From a distance, Harry can hear the pitter-patter of the water from the shower.

He moves to sit on the edge of the bed, feet finding solace in his slippers. His hand closes on his glasses that he perches on his nose. His pinky brushes on the scar on his forehead, and later he finds himself tracing it with his forefinger.

Down, to the left, then down again. Just a hair’s width, just a millimeter deep. Embedded on his skin, above his emerald green eyes.

Above the eyes so much like his mother’s.

The eyes that Severus asked to see before he-

No. Harry won’t let himself go there today,

But the scar came with losing his parents, and Severus, Severus was as much a promise to him as the scar etched onto his forehead. Severus, that came with Harry’s mother, with Harry’s father, with Sirius and Lupin and- and Voldemort.

Severus was as much a part of Harry’s life as Harry was a part of his.

 _Is_ a part, No, _was_. Was. Severus left. But he might be waiting, waiting for Harry to find him. Maybe. Maybe-

The bottom of Harry’s palm rests on the top of his glasses, eyes shut closed. Tears threaten to spill, and Harry holds the tears back while a finger rests at the foot of his scar.

He feels his heart beating heavily again, as it is when he thinks of Severus.

The door to the bathroom creaks open, and Harry braces himself to look groggy, to take away the tears, to pretend he had just woken up from a sweet, deep sleep.

Ginny’s footsteps are muffled by her fluffy slippers. As she comes nearer, her flowery scent invades his nose and he pushes himself to dream, to think, to wonder. About her, about all they’ve been through. About the days when he loved seeing flaming red hair on pristine white sheets, hazel eyes staring back at him every morning.

When she comes into the room he gets up and smiles, arms waiting for her to come into them.

“No,” she giggles, “Harry, you’re filthy.”

“Only because you made me.” Harry wiggles his eyebrows at that.

Ginny playfully slaps his chest and laughs, her melodious laughter filling Harry’s ears.

“Just go and take a bath, Harry James!”

Harry laughs, and finds his feet tripping on to the bathroom with Ginny’s urging. He closes the door behind him when he gets in, and while she leaves a carefree air around him, he can never shake off the emptiness lying deep inside him.

If it were Severus, if it were Severus, if it were Severus…

But that chain of thoughts never ended well. Find a way to find Severus, find Severus, but what about Ginny? Harry didn’t want to hurt Ginny; that’s about the last thing he’d want to do. So he’d stop thinking that train of thought, moving on to some trivial matters or work related things.

Or, he daydreams.

Harry turns the knob of the shower, letting rain-like droplets wash over his body, sending steam onto the walls. His messy hair tames down once the stream of water soaks it through and through, his glasses fogging on the stand outside.

When Harry closes his eyes, he imagines Severus opening the shower door, coming in to join him. Harry imagines Severus has left his clothes in the hamper, nothing but black eyes and greasy black hair and sallow skin coming in.

Harry gets a handful of shampoo, and chuckles to himself. His soft chuckle is muffled by the shower and Harry is glad he doesn’t have to hear the painful silence after.

Severus would drench himself in front of the shower, while Harry would put his arms around Severus from behind. Severus would be warm, a sweet kind of warm, sizzling away with the steam in the shower but warm, warm that it sends sparks all over Harry’s body at a single touch.

Harry massages the shampoo into his hair, kneading it into every handful of hair he grasps.

When Severus turns off the shower, Harry would massage the shampoo into Severus’ hair, and Severus could whisper a snide remark if he wants to, but Harry would always feel Severus’ shoulders relaxing at his touch. The grease falls away into the shampoo, and gets washed away when Severus turns on the shower again.

Harry washes off the shampoo, watching the suds go down the drain. He lets the water spray on his face for a while, travel down his body. He gets some soap and begins to rub it on his face, then his body.

Soaping each other would always be fun. It could end with innuendos or with something completely next level, or Severus would just run his fingers over Harry’s taut skin, smiling softly and kissing Harry sweetly as their eyes would meet in reverent silence. Harry would press his thumbs down on Severus’ biceps, sliding his thumbs down to Severus’ fingertips. Harry would let his lips ghost Severus’ lips, their foreheads pressing together as the melodious pitter-patter of the shower resounds around them.

The pitter-patter just reminds Harry how empty the shower is. He rinses himself off, watching his skin clear away of suds and soap, turning into simply wet flesh.

Severus would stand behind Harry when they rinse, slow and sweet and soft. The water will flow onto them and their fingers would ghost on the other’s skin, the soap and suds falling away. Emerald would stare into black, black stares into emerald, and two sets of soft lips smile softly, meeting halfway under the shower.

When Harry comes out of the shower, he dries himself off, and wraps the towel around his hips.

 _Ginny_.

For today, Harry ends his episode of ‘ _Severus and Me_ ’, or at least for now, and braces his face with a soft smile, eyes void of emptiness. When he comes out of the door, he convinces himself he’s looking for Ginny, wishing Ginny had showered with him, wishing it’s Ginny, Ginny, Ginny.

Ginny, not Severus.

 

When Harry comes out to the bedroom, Ginny is nowhere to be seen. But, he can smell the faint scent of bacon seeping into the room and hear the faint sound of oil sizzling in a pan.

Ginny’s cooking, and Harry’s stomach growls in agreement.

Remembering fondly how Ginny would always reprimand him if he doesn’t wear a shirt while in the kitchen, Harry grabs a pair of shorts and a shirt from their bedside drawers, sliding them on before he moves to exit the room. Upon closing the drawer, Harry sees the black lingerie he had bought Ginny for their first anniversary, and he remembers fondly life before now.

Everything made much more sense then. Everything was so much more happier, so much more peaceful.

And yet, when things were not bound to go wrong every second, Harry had anticipated chaos to strike. He had gotten so used to things going wrong every step of the way that he forgot to cherish life as he had it; he regrets not savoring the peace he had. The peace right at the palm of his hands before Severus Snape rose from the dead, before Harry realized that oh, how nice, he was falling in love with Severus Snape who is very much as old as his parents, but oh no that meant nothing, because Harry James Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived-Again-And-Again, was and is in love with Potions Master Severus Snape.

Who’s supposed to be dead, except he isn’t.

And the emptiness resurfaces. Harry softly closes the drawer with the black lingerie and clears his mind of memories, just thinking _Ginny, Ginny, Ginny_ and _Ginny’s cooking breakfast_ and _Ginny’s cooking is always good_. Then an afterthought rears itself at him, and he can’t help but acknowledge it.

_I wonder if Severus cooks, and does his cooking taste good?_

_I bet it does._

Shaking that thought away, Harry proceeds out of their bedroom, listening to the lock click into place while his feet made their way over to the stairs.

Before they got married, Harry had bought a house for him and Ginny, and their probable family.

Though Ginny more than disapproved, Harry ended up buying something more akin to a mansion than a house. Coincidentally, the location was close to Spinner’s End, though their home was pretty much isolated since they didn’t really have neighbors, but the property was considerably large enough that they wouldn’t really have neighbors.

It was pretty safe too. Enough spells to keep intruders out, especially since when Harry bought it, he was still pretty paranoid about Voldemort. Even if Voldemort was dead and gone.

Harry regrets he ever acknowledged his fears too much. He was already living such a good life; why didn’t he let himself enjoy it?

‘You’ll only know it matters when it’s gone,’ or whatever that saying is. Harry sees it fit for himself these days, though he spends more time thinking of something he shouldn’t be thinking about when he isn’t regretting his life decisions.

He reaches the foot of the steps, the scent of Ginny’s bacon much more pronounced now. He lets it waft into his nostrils and coax him into hunger.

His stomach growls. Harry’s happy he didn’t forget to put on a shirt, otherwise it would take another hour before he can eat his breakfast.

Or brunch. Or maybe this is breakfast during lunch. Whatever time it is.

Harry lets his feet bring him to the kitchen, and as if hearing his footsteps above the sizzling of the pan, Harry arrives to Ginny putting the bacon in plates, tea already in mugs beside the plates, and some bread and eggs beside the bacon.

These Sundays; Harry loves them. It’s so domestic, so far from reality.

So unbelievable, it’s like it’s a dream.

But that’s how everything with Ginny is. Like a dream.

“Glad you finally decided to get out of the shower.” She says while putting the pan onto the sink, then casting a spell to let the cooking things to wash themselves. “You sure take a while to bathe when it’s a Sunday.”

“But it’s a lazy Sunday, Gin,” Harry looks up at her, trying to convince her with a lazy smile and groggy eyes. For the first time today, he sees she isn’t convinced. “I can take as long as I can!”

She takes her seat beside him, her eyes screaming bacon.

“And because it’s a lazy Sunday, we are eating bacon. I know you love bacon, so here’s some Lazy Sunday Bacon.” _My love_. Ginny had always said ‘my love’. Or at least, back then, when they were newly wed and better off, and Harry wasn’t hiding behind a mask of mock love for his wife.

In her hazel eyes, Harry sees Ginny say don’t mention it, ignore it, play along. So Harry does, because Harry asks from Ginny the same thing.

Play House. Be husband and wife. Love each other, even when one person’s heart is with another.

Once again, Harry feels guilt at letting himself fall in love with someone else.

So he looks away and down at the bacon, devouring it with the egg and bread. He washes the food down with tea, and sooner rather than later, they’re both finished with breakfast.

When Harry sneaks a peak at Ginny, her hazel eyes are clouded with sadness. Harry quickly looks away to give her space. Harry wonders how it came to this, how it got so far that they didn’t even tell each other what they felt anymore, and that all they tend to do is pretend when they aren’t at work and away from each other, when they had no chance to run away.

To some extent, he wouldn’t even be surprised if she’s already having an affair. At least she’ll have someone to run to when he leaves her.

 _If_ he leaves her.

But Ginny has always loved Harry too much to go for someone else.

He looks to her, and watches a bit of her tea escape from her lips and dribble down her chin, plopping onto her chest. He tries to control himself, tries to tell himself not to go there.

It wouldn’t be something either of them would enjoy. But they need it, they both need it badly.

Because that way they wouldn’t have to talk. And Harry knows Ginny won’t want to talk about it; she just wants to play along.

So Harry closes the distance between their lips as soon as Ginny puts down her mug and launches himself at her, just as she seizes his shirt with her hands. Her fingers curl at his collar while his hands grasp her waist, and her legs curl around his hips when he carries her over to the counter.

He slips a hand beneath the oversized shirt she wears, an oversized shirt of his she tends to wear on lazy sunday mornings, and he pulls down lace panties while caressing milky skin.

She pushes, he pulls. He pushes, she pulls. Soon enough, her back is against the kitchen wall, and he’s tiptoeing over the counter. The cold of the counter bites at his exposed skin, just as Ginny rolls his shirt off and over his head.

“Right here, right now?” Harry husks into Ginny’s ear. Ginny gasps when Harry’s fingers touch her needy center. She’s wet, very wet, and her gasps and moans back up her thrusting.

She lets herself be silent for a while. He lets himself get harder.

“Imagine I’m him,” Ginny whispers, to Harry’s surprise. “When you fuck me, imagine I’m him.”

Harry closes his eyes and imagines not warm hazel eyes, but dark black. When he touches Ginny next, he imagines not a woman, but a man beneath him.

‘ _Imagine I’m him_.’ So that’s exactly what Harry does.


	6. Severus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The two 'books' I mention do not exist, at least to my knowledge. The author I made up doesn't exist either, so anything like that is more than probably coincidential. Enjoy!

Severus wakes up to rather dingy green walls and is welcomed into the morning by his daily waking thought.

Why doesn’t he have more Muggle money?

Then he’ll go on to list down the reasons for himself as he starts his day, mentioning the usual _you’re supposed to be dead, Snape_ and _you’ve never had Muggle money anyway_ and the occasional _and now you regret not caring about your Muggle parent; too late Snivellus_. As usual for Severus, he’ll have to drag himself out of bed, dreading the sights of his apartment.

He only had enough money—and still has only enough money—to rent a dingy place like this. Peeling wallpapers, grime and dust in corners, the occasional cockroach or rat. Since he had decided never to use magic again, in fear of being detected by the Ministry of Magic, Severus tended to try to clean his apartment on free days, though to no avail.

The disgusting dirt never comes off, and if it does, only a chunk comes off at a time. It would take him living in the apartment for at least a decade before he can clean it all off. And that doesn’t include shining the floorboards or changing the wallpaper.

On normal days, specifically weekdays, Severus went to work as a janitor in a nearby grocery store. He didn’t have enough Muggle credentials for anything else, nor did he have enough money to study what Muggles call ‘college’, and while he could stay for hours on end in the town library to read about Muggles and the necessary knowledge, such wouldn’t pay the bills.

So he went to work as a janitor. Not his top choice, since the job reeked of _Argus Filch_ , but it was the only choice he had.

So Severus became a janitor. Though his pay was relatively high because of how neat he tended to leave the grocery store even after just his first hour of work.

His boss was mesmerized by how clean the floor became, and Severus is so sure his boss would beg for him to stay if he tried to leave.

Leave. Not like there’s anywhere to leave to.

Today is a Sunday, so Severus only had an afternoon shift today. The grocery store was relatively calm on Sundays, contrary to popular belief, and is usually bursting on Fridays and Saturdays. Also, on Sunday mornings, the other janitor took the shift, the one named Gracie who Severus has collected to be the manager’s niece. The manager doesn’t force her to work though, she actually wants to.

The girl is about fifteen, working for extra cash. She’s a beautiful girl, and smart and disciplined too, which makes Severus happy he was given a partner like her. Especially since he revels in the disappointed looks of teenage boys who come to the grocery store to see her, just to find out the greasy old man has replaced her.

The manager also told him to guard the girl, keep her from harm. Severus agrees to that; he would have done it either way. Instinct, he tells himself. Since that’s all Severus has been doing his adult life, after Lily died.

Lily. Severus keeps a lily flower alive in his dingy room; it’s the only thing of beauty in the dark and dirty place.

When he isn’t walking around in the littered streets, Severus wears black. Black shirts, black pants, black boxers, black everything. It makes him feel like himself, if only for a while.

It makes him blend into the shadows. Makes him become Severus Snape again, not Paul Dubois. Paul Dubois is a normal person, just with weird looks; he smiles, he’s cheery, though he’s known to not be the type to talk too much, that’s why no one gets too close to him. But everyone knows Paul can be trusted. He can.

But Severus, oh Severus Snape is quite different. He is far from normal, and he sees himself as part of the darkness while everything, and he knows that it is _everything_ , that he wants is in the light. But Severus doesn’t step in the light: he knows he’ll get hurt if he does. And Severus Snape doesn’t smile, and he’s always angry at something. He doesn’t look like he can be trusted either. Severus thinks he shouldn’t be trusted at all.

But Paul Dubois is different. And beyond his apartment, his name isn’t Severus Snape, but Paul Dubois.

In the wizarding world, no one’s named Paul Dubois. In the wizarding world, Severus Snape is dead.

This Sunday, though, is different. Only because Severus feels it’s different. So he puts on a yellow polo and camouflage shorts, and saunters out wearing bright red sneakers. His hair’s also tied, and relatively not greasy. Even with his enormous nose, he doubts any witch or wizard would think he’s Severus Snape. Besides, Severus Snape died in the Second Wizarding War.

This is Paul Dubois, the Muggle.

So Severus steps out of the building of his apartment and walks down the cobblestone alley, passing by a young man riding along on his bike and a young woman wearing a bright yellow sundress. Severus—no, _Paul_ —offers a meek smile to both, and both return a bright smile to the meek old man from the shabby apartment.

Paul. Yes, Paul. Paul walks out into the sunlight, out of the alley where the door to his apartment building lied, and into the streets where shop doors are open left and right, people leisurely walking around in the Sunday morning air. Across the street, he sees a man walking his dog while another cyclist passes. As it is, the neighborhood is peaceful just the way Paul likes it.

Walking down the street, Paul passes a clothing store for ladies and gentlemen, custom sewing for all occasions. Paul had met the owner once before, and the owner had given him some clothes to wear other than his dark, black wardrobe. He had received a pastel blue t-shirt then, and floral jeans, and the owner had apologized for such a feminine ensemble when Paul had looked like a gothic type of guy.

Paul had smiled then. He told the owner not to worry, that it was enough. A few months later, Paul had come back to the store to repay the owner, and since the owner kept denying the money Paul was giving for payment, Paul decided for a compromise. The owner, ever the nice fellow, agreed to let Paul take them both to dinner. The two, both old and aging, thought it would be a nice way to pass the time.

Paul found out that the owner was happily married, though her wife had passed away. The owner, an old woman with a kind smile, had always been gay though never realized it. That was until she met the love of her life, and they had gotten married after a long while of friendship and confusion.

 _“She was my best friend,”_ the owner had said. _“And I still think she is.”_

The store a few blocks away from the custom stewing store is a shoe store. There, Paul stumbled upon a man younger than him, though not too much younger, who gave him new shoes. The shoes were brown and leather, and suited Paul’s taste very much. A few months after the chance meeting, Paul had given repayment to which the man and his wife accepted.

 _“You’re much too kind for someone your age,”_ the wife’s sister had said. _“It’s almost like you’re an angel sent to show people how to act.”_

Reaching the end of the street, Paul arrives at the square. Various groups had congregated everywhere, from families to friends, from children to elderly, and he soon feels the corners of his lips raising even just a little bit. The square isn’t usually this crowded, and he guesses it only gets this filled on a Sunday.

His favorite coffee shop is on the right from where he is walking, between an ice cream shop and a candy shop. Paul enters the shop, the small bell ringing melodiously as it always does when a new customer came in.

“Hi-yah, Paul! How’s it goin’?” The barista’s loud and joyful tones resounds around the small shop. Most people would just come in and stop by to buy coffee, then leave once they get their order. Few, very few, actually stay to enjoy it. Of that few is Paul.

“Great, actually. The usual please.” Paul offers a warm though meek smile to the barista, and the barista turns around with a jump to his step. Paul takes a seat near the counter, taking out a book that he had borrowed from the town library.

Paul Dubois is known as a neighborhood man who spends most of his time cleaning at the grocery store. He has a shy, warm smile and meek, black eyes. His hair is mostly tied, and he owns though doesn’t frequently wear a pair of black-rimmed glasses. He dresses in awfully bright colors, or at least a little too bright for his personality, and most people tend to wonder what’s with the clashing combination. Those who know him enough, though, see it as a way for him to portray what he doesn’t. Paul is known to be rather shy, or if not shy, rather meek. He doesn’t talk in a boisterous tone, though when he talks it has a gentle sound to it.

Additionally, he is known as the resident bookworm. Always coming home late from the library when he has the time, and usually reading and drinking tea in his free time.

Today, he’s reading _Jason Irkway’s Soleil et Lune_ , a collection of poems with topics that range from romance to politics.

Paul Dubois is admittedly a weird individual. Though most people don’t bother with that; he certainly gives a pastel undertone to the cobblestone streets.

“Here y’are!” Paul is jostled away from reading by the barista’s cacophonous voice, standing up and heading to the counter.

“Thank you very much.” Paul says with a smile. The same small bright smile with so much gratefulness.

“No problemo. Don’t forget to stop by the next time you get a coffee urge!”

Paul leaves the shop with a contempt smile, sipping at his coffee with the book in his other hand. A few minutes, and he passes the cyclists and the couples and the groups of friends and the children. Soon, he’s back in his apartment building and in front of his apartment door.

He opens the door, then closes it behind him.

The dark envelopes him, and he sets the coffee on the table.

Sheds the bright clothes. Puts on black ones. And the smile fades away.

Once again, Paul Dubois stays behind the door and outside of the apartment, and inside dwells Severus Snape.

By the window with the curtains drawn, Severus takes a sip of his coffee.

Unlike everything else that Paul Dubois likes, the coffee is black.

Severus sets the book down by his bedside table, taking a large gulp of the coffee. It scalds his tongue, it boils down his throat; but he doesn’t mind, and likes it actually. It’s one of the only reminders he has of being alive, alive but not living, alive but only barely breathing, alive and just surviving because he hadn’t let himself die that night and for what? To continue suffering? To continue dragging himself through the days and through the nights?

Had he been a coward to let himself keep breathing?

Some days he agrees with himself. Others he doesn’t.

Today is one of those days when he does. So he lets his coffee scald his tongue, the lily in his apartment seemingly grinning at him in a mocking fashion. Sometimes he wants to throw the lily away. But then, he thinks, if he throws it away, he might as well throw himself into psychosis, or better yet, insanity, and let himself die on the edge of a road rather than name himself ‘Paul Dubois’ and act like a happy Muggle in a small French town.

He pulls his hair tie off, sets in in the drawer.

It comes off easily these days; it feels like being a wizard was a lifetime ago.

If there’s anything Severus hates more, it’s letting himself lurk like this. It could take him days to come back, maybe weeks when he’s not lucky, trying to make himself anything other than empty because what is life now that he’s free? Free, but dead? Free in the sense that there is no one to answer to, no one to worry about, no one to _protect_ , but what then? He’s dead as a wizard, so live like a Muggle? Even as a wizard, had he chosen to reveal his thrumming pulse, what was he to do?

 _Open up a potions shop,_ Severus takes a large gulp of his coffee, _like I’ve always wanted to_.

But his long fingers hadn’t touched potion ingredients in so long. He doesn’t even think he can make so much as a Calming Draught after all that’s happened.

Severus tips the cup down and lets the coffee slide down his throat. Hot, boiling, dangerous to human body tissue. But does he care? Not so much. More like the sensation helps keep him sane, helps keep him from throwing himself out of the window.

He puts the coffee cup on the table, leaving to throw it out when he goes to the grocery story for his afternoon shift.

The real reason why he borrows library books comes: it’s the only thing that can keep him from remembering any more.

So he lies his back down on his bed, and after learning Italian those first few months of being here, he could read French novels knee-deep in vocabulary, and understand it without getting a massive headache.

And so he reads, neither as Severus Snape nor Paul Dubois, but just as himself, a man yearning to get lost in text.

Before _Soleil et Lune_ , the novel he had been reading went something like this.

A young boy had gone to fall in love with his best friend. She was a beautiful maiden, with bright blue eyes and beautiful brown hair. She had fair skin and a bespeckled nose, and all the boys found her cute. All the boys wanted her too.

She had gone to fall in love with the school “jock”—a guy Severus discovered to be one who plays sports and is one of the popular, good-looking boys in school. _Much like James_ , Severus had thought, because ‘Potter’ belonged to two people now.

And Harry was anything but a jock.

So the boy’s in love with his girl best friend who falls in love and gets into a relationship with the school’s biggest jerk. Unknowingly for the girl, her boyfriend—the school jock—regularly beats up the boy. The boy and the girl were still best friends through it all, though have distanced a bit because of the relationship.

When the girl finds out, she’s shocked. She breaks up with the jock and spends more time with her best friend, eager to make up for lost time.

 _In your face, Ethan_. Severus had thought upon reading those bits of the plot.

And slowly, the girl began to fall for her best friend.

Just as she did, the boy began to fall for someone else.

So the story became about a girl chasing after her best friend who she had fallen in love with, who had fallen in love with her and who had fallen in love with someone else.

She tries to win him back; tries, tries, tries. To no avail.

Then she finally gives in, gives up. She moves to another country and lets herself fall in love again, or what she thinks is falling in love again, since at the back of her mind she knows she left the love of her life behind and she’d never fall in love like that again. But the way he loved her was nothing like the way she loved him: his love was puppy love, an attachment that can easily be confused with finding the love of one’s life. She was his first love, and the closest he’s ever gotten to anyone. But she loved him like a wife would love her husband.

It was just too bad he loved someone else that way.

But she tried to be happy for him, tried to fall in love again. And she did as he did, falling in love with many people and being with other people. But to her, no one could ever rise to compare with him.

Then the story shifted back to him before it ended.

He was in a happy relationship; as happy as can be. But every night before he sleeps he stares at a candy wrapper he keeps in the deepest pockets of his wallet, a candy wrapper from the candy she first gave him when they first met.

He was still hopelessly in love with her; and she still hopelessly loved him too.

And that kept Severus up, that story kept Severus Snape up all night when he finally finished the book. The title was in English, easily enough that Severus had wanted to read it the first time he set foot in the library, the first time he set eyes on it. _I’m In Love With My Best Friend, And Other Ridiculous Stories_ , except when he opened it, it was in heavy, impeccable French.

Having not learned how to say even ‘goodbye’ yet, he had to learn how to speak French first.

It was easier in England. But it was also easier to get caught, especially when he still walked around in black robes with greasy hair.

And so, after that novel, Severus decided to go on reading things that did not require too much emotional investment, as he took a long time before he got back to normal after that. So he looked for poetry, since short stories were not exactly short, and there was nothing shorter than anthological poetry, so Severus decided on it.

Then he found _Soleil et Lune_.

> “ _My love for you is like the stars,_  
>  ‘Mon amour pour toi est comme les étoiles,’  
>  Wavering for all eternity.  
>  ‘Vacillant pour toute l’éternité.’  
>  But know that no matter where you are,  
>  ‘Mais sachez que peu importe où vous êtes,’  
>  You will always have me.  
>  ‘Tu auras toujours moi.’ ”

Empowering, though not something typical for Severus Snape.

Then again, he stopped being the one known as ‘Severus Snape’ the moment he let the entire wizarding world think he had died at the fangs of a cursed snake.

When noon comes, Severus sets his book aside to put on his janitor uniform, and pockets the book before leaving the apartments. He tucks his black clothes where it’s not scattered, takes one last glance at the lily in the apartment, then leaves for his afternoon shift.

Once again, he is not Severus Snape, but rather Paul Dubois.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for being patient everyone! I'm sorry it took me so long to post this. But till next time, and thank you fir your patience! Always. :)


	7. Ink

Harry couldn’t believe Ginny realized it was a guy.

But after the nightmares that followed those nights, Ginny would probably be a blind idiot not to have realized it sooner.

Maybe he was stupid to not have expected her to find out somehow.

All Harry hopes is that Ginny hasn’t figured out exactly who.

“So, where do you think should we shop for everyone’s gifts? Any wizarding place we go, they always happen to bump into us and your excuses are always so awful, and it’s not like we can ask it to be delivered by _floo network_ , I mean you never know, it might break or something…”

Harry listens to Ginny drone on, watching at how her bright face seems to grow brighter framed by her flaming red hair while the sunlight streaming in from the kitchen windows bounce onto her face. She looks so happy, but when he looks in her eyes, he can’t fool himself into thinking somewhere in there, she’s in pain.

Her lips are in a foolish smile; he knows she’s faking it, all because of him.

“—Eat your food before it gets cold— And handpicking was always better, but how will we buy gifts without bumping into anyone we know?”

Her hazel eyes turn to look at him, and somewhere in the fiery storm he sees a simple request.

_‘Play along, please.’_

After all he’s done to her, Harry thinks she deserves at least this, if he can’t give her anything else.

“Well we could always Apparate into shops, you know, less chance.” He takes a bite of her toast and sets it back down on the plate. She never fails to look like she comes from a painting of the most beautiful woman in the world. “But, there’s never a guarantee they won’t be in the next shop we Apparate into.”

She takes a seat beside him, her movements like that of a heavenly being.

“You are right that it would be less likely for us to bump into them. It’s a pretty great idea actually.”

He scoots closer to her and lets thoughts of play-pretend slip out of his mind. Some things remain real, despite everything.

Harry wrapps an arm around her, and kisses her on the cheek. Ginny turns to him with a grateful glint in her eyes, transforming into loving delight when she realizes he isn’t pretending at all.

She brings her palm up to cup his cheek and he leans into her touch; warm and perfect.

“And maybe while we’re at it, we can find an Unplottable in the Wizarding World to spend a bit of alone time. Just you and me.”

Harry smiles. He’d love the prospect of being with Ginny, just Ginny, and falling asleep in her embrace at a random place. He’d wake up at dusk to her having fallen asleep as well, her hair all over her face. He’d tuck her stray hair behind her ears, and she’d wake up with a sweet, groggy look in her face.

He will always love her.

But-

“Maybe we can go shopping today and visit some Unplottable before the season gets a little more busy in the shops. You never know, maybe we’ll find a nice New Year’s spot for just us two.”

Ginny giggles and arcs into Harry’s embrace. The sunlight hits her so perfectly this way, dancing on her skin and making every detail in her eyes much brighter than usual.

She presses her lips on his and he closes his eyes on contact. Ginny’s kisses were always warm, always welcoming, always like sunny summer days or bright winter mornings. They always felt like soaring at top conditions, winning the Quidditch game seamlessly, flying to Merlin knows where beside the person he knows he’d spend the rest of his life with.

But-

No. Not now. Not today.

He pulls away just as she does, with both pairs of lips curved into a content, happy smile.

Her hazel eyes looks at him from beneath her eyelashes.

“I’m looking forward to that.”

“Me too,” Harry says breathlessly, not knowing how to breathe when the woman in front of him is breathing incarnate.

She slips away from him and swaggers into hall, calling out behind her to him.

“Finish your breakfast! Then we go to Diagon Alley.”

Harry launches the bread and bacon in his mouth, draining his morning beverage before all but tossing his dishes on the magical sink, his eyes never leaving Ginny’s figure before he dashes after her.

He tries not to think of onyx eyes and black hair. No. Not today.

Just auburn and hazel. No black today.

* * *

Diagon Alley, though always packed, is unusually less packed today. Though it’s easy to get used to the packed streets, and there’s at least twice as much people today than on the days when it isn’t the last days of summer or the last month of the year, Ginny and Harry thought people would come around to buy their presents a little earlier, to avoid the impossible crowd of people at those times.

“You’d think with how much people there were last year, you wouldn’t see anyone you know.” Harry tells Ginny as they push past a couple and a large group of friends. “It’s like the less people there are, the less likely you’re going to bump into someone you know.”

“Sounds illogical, but true.” Ginny agrees as she leads the way, pushing past a rather big old man, and pulling Harry back beside her.

The shops are filling up as the holidays approach, just as the temperature is falling as fall comes to a close. The book shops look to have twice as much books as usual, and if Harry’s eyes could see right and his glasses didn’t need adjusting, Flourish and Blotts look to have _thrice_ as much books as usual.

“Don’t they usually restock before classes start?” Harry asks as they push their way into Amanuensis Quills.

“Well, they don’t _just_ sell textbooks, now do they?”

“Right.” Harry says, smiling in spite of himself, and wondering at those shining hazel eyes.

Harry guesses it would be much harder to make onyx eyes shine-

“So, I will go get a quill for ‘Mione, maybe stop by Wizz Hard Books for a new book. Now you,” Ginny pushes Harry out of the doorway of Amanuensis Quills and back onto the crowded cobblestone streets. “Get Ron some of that broom wax he wanted. And maybe that new Miracle Detangler, too.”

With one last smile, Ginny turns away and leaves Harry to stare back at her, destination and money at hand but mind flying elsewhere.

No black, no black, no black. Not even onyx. Hell, onyx is too poetic. And that man was never much of a poet-

_“What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”_

Then again, it sounds more like a Potion Master’s inside joke with himself except it was more like a bitter statement than a joke-

_For Merlin’s sake, Potter, get your feet to buy some gifts!_

So Harry turns and speeds away from the front of Amanuensis Quills and tries to push past the crowd, over to Quality Quidditch Supplies where he plans to buy Ron’s gifts.

As he looks through the shelves, he finds his mind echoing with thoughts once more. The black jars of polishes reminds him of painful black eyes in the moonlight, black brushes remind him of black hair reaching thin, nearly boney shoulders, and phials showcasing ingredients of various cleaners remind him of phials and jars and potions and poisons, draughts and antidotes and _for Merlin’s sake get out of my head!_

Harry finds the wax and some Miracle Detangler, and approaches the counter to pay some twenty Galleons for his best mate’s present.

He remembers salty sallow skin and soft gasps and creaky beds.

Maybe there were bed bugs, but knowing the man, Harry’s sure the room would’ve been drowned in Muggle disinfectant at least ten times over to get rid of even the slightest hint of a bed bug.

Harry takes the package and listens to the soft jingle of the bell as he exits. He’d meet Ginny in the Apothecary as they always do, where they buy their gift for George. Just George.

Ginny had nearly moved out when Harry kept making the mistake of saying ‘Fred and George’.

Harry leans against the cool glass of the Apothecary window, scanning the crowd for a familiar pair of hazel eyes and auburn hair.

But he finds himself drawn to every pair of black eyes, and every head of black hair.

No, no black today. Just hazel and auburn.

Harry’s glad for a different reason when he spots a bright smile and flowing, auburn hair.

“Ginny!”

They enter the Apothecary together, each carrying their own paper bags as they go to pick out George’s gift.

* * *

Harry kneels down before his parent’s graves, two slim bouquets in his arms that he brings down gently before setting them down, one on each grave. A small amount of snow had fallen, barely an inch. Harry sets to sit on his heels before smiling despite himself, and finally sitting on the bare ground.

“Hi Mum, hi Dad,” he whispers into the wind, hoping no tear falls this winter. “How’ve you been doing?”

Ginny had gone on a Girl’s Night Out with the rest of them, which gave Harry an excuse to come here. After everything that’s happened, Harry couldn’t find one reason why he shouldn’t have come here.

He needs this. And if they were still here, he’d need their voices to be here with him.

“I haven’t exactly been doing fine, since um, since the War.” Harry shakes his head and can’t quite look straight. The War? So many things have happened since then, but only recently has the biggest change happened. The biggest, most unprecedented thing that Harry couldn’t believe at all.

“I’ve been having lots of nightmares, and as much as Ginny’s been able to help me through them,” Harry gulps, not quite being able to say it. He looks up, green eyes bright with shame and fear. “She wasn’t really able to make them go away.

“I’ve been trying potions, spells, even Occlumency-” and it pains Harry to remember who had first taught him about it- “- but nothing ever actually worked. I tried drinking but it never helped. I tried flying for a while but it didn’t help either.

“When Ginny started to hold me through every episode, I felt the nightmares easing bit by bit. I would’ve thought they’d gone, even if just a little every time, but when they came back at midday naps they became stronger every time. I got checked and I’ve been taking potions to help it, but nothing ever actually helped.

“They were all just control and mildness. But the nightmares were still there. And I wanted the nightmares gone.”

Harry could feel it by now: the bite at his cheeks whenever the wind blows, the freeze of his skin where the tear would pass. He couldn’t keep his head in one place; he couldn’t keep himself tame.

“But they kept telling me to wait. Wait! Wait, for how long? I already waited my entire life, eleven years before I had anything like home, and seven more before I could live a year in peace! And they were telling me to wait! Wait for what?! There’s nothing there! Nothing but more waiting, because there’s always more to wait for!”

Harry’s forehead is inches above the snow-covered ground. His hand begins to freeze against the cold wind.

He could whisper a quick charm. But the cold biting at him doesn’t seem to bother him a bit.

“And then I wasn’t waiting anymore.”

Black hair, black eyes, black clothes. Pale, sallow skin and a thin body. Salty skin and a creaking bed. A memory of a scowl, a disgusting smirk; an emotionless line on thin lips, but painful, pain-filled eyes.

“He made all the nightmares go away. He made every recurring scene: in Malfoy Manor, with Bellatrix and Dobby; in the graveyard with Cedric and Voldemort; in the Burrow with Fred and George; in the Astronomy Tower, with Draco and- and Dumbledore—he made all of it go away.

“And every night I slept beside him, every night I know he was there beside me, every night I know he was right there and wouldn’t leave me, the nightmares never came and I woke up better than I’ve ever had all my life.”

Then Harry flashes back to that third day, that first time it happened.

“But then- But then one day—and every single time that followed after that—he was always gone when I woke up.”

Harry remembers feeling empty and missing, then turning around to find empty space on the other side of the bed, and nothing but the view of crappy wallpaper in the crappy flat.

Harry remembers coming back, thinking maybe it was just coincidence, maybe something came up. But it happened again. So Harry came back, and it happened, and he came back, and it happened again.

And he came back and he left and he came back and he left.

“He didn’t even leave a note. He didn’t even try to wake me up to say goodbye.”

 _But he was always there when I came back,_ but the thought is so treacherous that Harry pushes it back immediately to the deepest crevices of his mind.

A snowflake falls onto an immaculate petal of the bouquet of royal lilies. It nearly melts into the flower; both are white and bright under the peaking sunlight. But the snowflake evidently slides off the petal, and the petal is back to being pure and immaculate once more.

Harry thinks of the many things wrong with it. _It_. The black hair and the onyx eyes and him, Harry, with his own jet-black hair and almond-shaped, bright green eyes. They are both men, and they are both _men_ , and how could Harry have let himself gone there with a man? How could Harry have slept with, not to mention possibly fallen in love with, a man? And while Harry was married, _is_ married.

That isn’t even the half of it.

Severus Snape is Harry’s former professor. Professor in Potions for five years, Defense Against The Dark Arts for one year. They became sworn enemies, forced allies, but they never got along. Still, Harry was student and Snape teacher, and Harry was at least twenty years younger.

Severus Snape is James Potter’s biggest pet peeve. Enemy. Annoyance. Many words could be used for it, depending on the perspective. James bullied Snape, and Snape hated him—it became apparent in time that the two would never get along. They took two sides in the War and they had always been. Snape was Slytherin, James was Gryffindor.

Severus Snape is Lily Evans-Potter’s childhood friend. They were the best of friends, so close and inseparable. Harry could bet if Hogwarts had no Houses that Snape and Lily would’ve ended up together. Severus would’ve loved that, the Severus in crappy robes and who got bullied by the Marauders.

Severus Snape and Sirius Black loathed each other. And, it seemed, not only for the Marauders-Snape reason, but also for the fact that the rest of Sirius’ family remains loyal to Snape’s old loyalty.

Severus Snape and Remus Lupin only had one thing they ever could be civil about: Wolfsbane Potion. There was nothing else they had in common, and nearly anything else they had in common, they would have loved to fight about.

Severus Snape and Harry Potter should have never met in that bar that night. Harry knows Severus is thinking the same thing. Otherwise, why did Severus leave? If Severus didn’t regret it, this, everything they’d done, he would’ve never left. But he did.

 _At least he left a note that time,_ but again, Harry pushes the thought to the furthermost reaches of his brain. He’d find a loophole, and he didn’t want to find it now.

“I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry, Dad.

“I made the biggest mistake I could ever make.”

Harry watches the snow pile up. He knows if he comes back here in a couple of days, the flowers would be shrivelled up; magic or no magic, the cold always killed bouquets anyway.

When Harry speaks again, it’s in a painful whisper.

“But he was probably the best mistake I ever made.”

Harry brushes himself off after a few moments of silence and stands back up. He makes his way back to his parents’ home that he had never grown up in, now renovated and much more suitable to live in.

He had not, however, removed their old things.

Harry kept it there. But he had moved his baby things in boxes to turn the room a little more suitable for his age.

By his bed, a wooden chest sits untouched, dust collecting on it and its worn handles nearly rusting from the cold.

Harry sits on the edge of his bed and settles the chest between his legs. Severus’ will had bequeathed all possessions to the only Harry James Potter, and Harry had never understood why _everything_ to _him_ until one night, it occurred to him that Severus had no more family left, had become no one’s family, and trusted no one other than himself.

Severus only had Dumbledore. And he better well remember that he killed, as per Dumbledore’s request, Dumbledore himself.

Which left Harry.

Whom Severus entrusted his entire life’s worth of memories to. Whom Severus entrusted every secret he never wanted anyone to know about to. Whom Severus gave up his life protecting, although it all started with Severus’ love for Lily Evans, but in the end he grew to care for Harry too.

Care, it seems, and love.

Of all Severus’ possessions is this chest. Old, worn, wooden; not to be opened because of many, many enchantments. Only the rightful owner could open it, and the will was enchanted to know that. So it belongs to Harry now, and this was said to be Severus’ most important possessions.

The things Severus Snape kept above all things. The things he protected, and still protects, even more than his own life. Though Harry guesses, given the chance Severus would never have let his life go unprotected.

But a child never has control over their life, now do they?

For the first time after the will was announced, Harry flicks open the locks, and lifts and lid.

The shadow of the lid reveals, not bottles and phials of ominous liquids and materials, but the most mundane of things.

A pair of school shoes. Robes. Books. Notebooks. An age-old quill, and a bottle of ink.

A small pouch, maybe money though it looks more like marbles than Galleons, but nothing more. It looks to just be Severus’ old school things, and it definitely seems as how yellowing some of the books are. But why in Merlin’s name Severus Snape would care about his school things, Harry had no idea.

A black-covered notebook rests atop everything, with a quill and a bottle of ink.

A notebook, that seems a little new, though yellowing but now in a convincing way.

Harry moves to his desk and pulls the seat for him to take. He sets down the ink and the quill, flipping open the notebook to see what note Severus could have written, what magical word could have been left behind.

Maybe this could hint where Severus is, or at the very least, give Harry closure so he could stop searching for a man who doesn’t want to be found.

But as Harry dashes through the pages, he finds nothing but empty parchment.

Disheartened, Harry flips to the first page.

He takes the quill and uncorks the ink. Maybe it’s just an unused school notebook. If so, Harry will say his last words here.

Goodbye, and the end for their story. And Harry will move on and hope the nightmares go away in Ginny’s embrace. But as the ink overflows from the quill, and drops on the page before the quill ever touches the parchment, a familiar thin cursive reveals itself, and the pages suddenly seem more worn, and more darkened by ink than they were a minute ago when Harry flipped through them.

‘ _This is property of the Half-Blood Prince._ ’

And the pages are filled to the brim.


	8. Keepsakes

At first, Harry could barely make himself touch it. The parchment looks so old and brittle, yellowing and looking so thin it could rip at a miniscule tug. At some parts, the ink looks to have somehow mixed with the parchment, as if the words were not written down but printed into the parchment.

The pages hold a heavy weight, moving the spine to the left as if to plant the spine flat on the desk, the pages fluttering open until the spine finally lay with the pages balanced on either side of the notebook.

Carefully, slowly, as if solemnly and reverently, Harry brings his hand up to grasp the bundle of pages fallen to the left, and closes the notebook before opening it again.

The familiar, thin, slanted writing stares back at him. Old ink and old handwriting didn’t seem to deter the seven words written on the first page.

_‘This is property of the Half-Blood Prince.’_

Taking his fingers to the top right corner, slightly shaking with awe and fear and anxiety, Harry pulls at the page and turns it over.

> _The Only Perfect Floorboard_

The title was written in a rather clumsy way, big letters compared to _Sectumsempra_ in the Potions book Harry had found in his sixth year. It looks as if the handwriting is from someone who might have just learned how to write, and looked to practice it though nearly unreadable as it looked more akin to chicken claw marks than an actual human scrawl.

> _Yesterday night, while Mum and Dad were going again in the living room, I crawled up in bed and pushed my ears hard on my pillows. I could still hear them, because they were very loud, but at least it was a little less loud and a little less like words. Muffled might be the term to describe it._
> 
> _I wouldn't usually crawl up in bed. The last time Dad found me like this, he slapped me and punched me twice before pulling me up and dropping me on my feet and saying “Are you a girl, curling in your bloody sheets like that?” and since I couldn’t find any words to say, I just shook my head and made sure never to do it again._
> 
> _But tonight, I just had to._
> 
> _I heard Dad telling Mum she might as well go kill herself if she was going to do things like this. And, even if Mum had been told off like that before, I’ve never heard her shout back “What if I did?”_
> 
> _Dad had said for her to go ahead and try, and they had begun shouting of ways that might as well been how was it best to get killed. I kept imagining Mum in those situations, finding her body like that, and I couldn’t let myself keep going at it._
> 
> _They kept screaming until past midnight. By the time they had stopped shouting, my dad had slammed the door and my mom had began crying in the kitchen._
> 
> _I didn’t want to hear her crying. But she was always crying these days._
> 
> _The entire time, I was staring at the floor until I began taking notice of the floorboards one by one. The first one was something like pulled but never budged, and it had bits of the wood bending up of some sorts. The second one cracked and left a hole in the corner, and the third one looked like it could have been nibbled by termites._
> 
> _The fourth one, though, was completely spotless._
> 
> _While I listened and felt the door slamming behind my dad, I stopped to think. We had no floorboards that were anything like that one. All our floorboards were somehow broken. Some might have been fine, except the dust and the dirt clung to it so much that if we cleaned it, half the board might come off._
> 
> _While I listened to my mother’s cries last night, I stared at that floorboard._

The next lines look to have been written later. The handwriting becomes less shaky, and a little more legible compared to the previous one.

> _The next time my dad came with me in my bedroom, I had stared at the floorboard while curled up by my dresser. My hands were pressed hard on my ears and I could smell alcohol and vomit._
> 
> _I stared at the floorboard until it all stopped. Even when I heard the last shout that night and a bottle shattering, I stared at that floorboard before crawling in my bed and falling asleep._

Harry’s hand rests on the side of the book, holding the page down as if afraid they would turn and he’d lose the page. Though untidy, he knows this is Severus’ handwriting. He knows this is Severus as a kid. And while he’s seen Severus’ memories, he never knew it this closely until now.

He stares at the page with the untidy scrawl. Could the shakiness have been Severus’ hand shaking? Afraid his dad might come anytime and start beating him up? Or wracked with sobs though holding it in, knowing being found like that would earn him a very painful night? Either thought sent Harry’s stomach reeling, as if he had eaten a really bad egg before coming here today.

Was this how Severus knew life as a kid?

Harry vaguely remembers waking up to cobwebs and spiders and dust falling on his face.

A lifetime ago, it seems, but so does Severus’ childhood.

Much more bravely now, Harry turns the page to preview the next few items.

> _A Stray Shard From A Bottle Of Firewhisky_
> 
> _At least a week ago, Dad and Mum fought while I was in the room and Dad threw his bottle of Firewhisky. I had been scraped by some flying shard that probably flew past me, since I had been by the wall and the bottle got thrown there, and the shards just went everywhere when it shattered._
> 
> _Yesterday, when they fought again with me in the room, they fought in the sitting room and I managed to wedge myself between two book cases if ever they remember I’m here._
> 
> _Something poked me from a bookcase, and when I looked, it was a shard from the Firewhisky bottle. It got squeezed between the wall and the shelf, and when their screaming got louder, I thought it would be better if I just stared at the shard while hoping they don’t notice me in the shadows._

Harry turns a few more pages.

> _The Magician’s Nephew_
> 
> _There were many books among our shelves. But, with Mum and Dad constantly fighting and Mum always cleaning the mess, I was always resolved to spending days in my room, never being able to get a book from the shelves to read in my spare time._
> 
> _Dad would ask me if I was a girl again if he found that I liked reading books._

Harry turns a few more pages again.

> _The Peeling Ceiling Wallpaper_
> 
> _Mum and Dad fought again last night, and Dad was soaked in alcohol._

The next few pages—and, Harry guessed, the rest of the notebook—bears titles and stories of one thing and the other, all amidst what was happening in the walls of the Snape household though it all revolved around such. It seems that every entry in the notebook had an item as the main focus, but Harry couldn’t help but think it’s more of what happened for Severus to care about that item, than the item itself.

Harry finds himself flipping through more pages but never actually reading any of them, until he reaches the back cover with all the pages a black, inky blur in his mind.

The notebook is filled, page after page. Though, the handwriting, through the pages, gets closer and closer to Severus’ current small, slanted script. The more Harry thinks about it, the closer he seems to pull the black leather covers to himself. It’s like having Severus’ life right there in front of him, for him to find out about.

Harry wishes in the back of his mind that somewhere in this notebook, Severus left a note for him to find. Somewhere in it, Harry hopes, is something to either help him forget Severus altogether, or find him wherever he is in the world.

Harry knows the latter is too much to dream off, but the mere thought of a goodbye note streaked with ‘for Harry Potter only’ seems like a stretch already. But Harry hopes, because he can’t keep his heart from hoping, and flips the notebook back on its front cover, the black leather reminding him of billowing capes in dark, dingy dungeons.

He looks out the window where the snow falls and heightens the pile on the windowsill. Beyond that, there are houses with whitening roofs and trees with tinted leaves. The snow falls a little heavier now, and Harry’s sure to get a scolding from Ginny if she comes back finding him with a cold the next day.

Harry decides to bring with him the notebook, quill, and ink, moving to close the chest before he spots something else that he thinks he should bring back with him.

It isn’t much. Trivial, others may call it. Mundane as it may be, Harry pulls it out of the chest and lets the lid shut close, wordless charms engulfing the worn wood and rusted iron from Harry’s wand. Once satisfied, Harry slips the notebook in his jacket, putting it in his breast pocket, before pocketing the quill and ink and spinning in place, a green and silver scarf spinning after him.

He Apparates back home, safe from the cold and bite of the winter snow.

Even with magical fire, Harry doubts he can keep himself warm long enough. Walking in that snow, even in his many layers of clothing and pocketed gloves if he had put them on, could’ve gotten him so cold that he’d have a fever incurable until at least the next day. Knowing Ginny, she’d know where to get potions to heal him, or at least to speed up the process.

Potions—

No. Harry knows he can’t go there. Not when he could feel self-deprecation gnawing at him, his heart somehow turning his legs to lead.

So he climbs up to his room— _their_ room, though only a fool wouldn’t notice the clear boundaries of their belongings—before his legs could lead him to the couch, and peels away his clothing as he lights up the fire. The notebook finds its way on the bedside table, so does the quill and the ink, while the scarf finds its way around Harry’s neck and around Harry’s arms; the scarf is as warm as Harry knows a certain black haired man would be.

If only Severus hadn’t left, they could be spending tonight together, neither of them having to be alone.

Harry wants to ignore the small voice pointing out his selfishness, except that it’s completely true. Regardless, Harry pushes the thought to the back of his mind, his body sinking in the softness and warmth of the bed.

_How could you be married to Ginny when at least half your thoughts are ones you won’t ever even tell her?_

Harry’s eyes stare up aimlessly at the ceiling. He knows he can’t keep his marriage like this; the sheer pretending is enough tension already. A little more, and he’s sure one of them is going to break. He’d say he’s afraid Ginny will be first, but he knows he’ll be the forerunner in that.

_How could you trick her to keep the marriage when you barely think about her at all?_

And again, Harry’s thoughts are right, because ever since that first night and ever since Severus left, Harry thought day and night about black robes and black hair and black eyes and sallow skin, salty kisses and greasy grips and warmth that he’d never known. He’d think ‘what if Severus’ this, ‘what if Severus’ that, thinking of presents and moments and places and _dreams_ , dreams unlikely to happen but still, Harry dreams.

In the past few weeks, Harry couldn’t even lie to himself that he’d think of Ginny more than, collectively, at least an hour. It had always been about potion-stained fingers and soft, thin lips; darkness and dark hair and dark eyes; silent nights and creaking beds and _Merlin_ the worst dreams Harry’s had, when Severus all but holds his hand amidst the chaotic world, and they could be standing in a burning house but Harry knew he’d be okay, then he’ll wake up after Severus whispers three painful, _beautiful_ words that, come to think of it, Harry nor Ginny have said in the past few months.

Harry lets out a sigh. Even with the warmth of the Slytherin scarf, Harry still feels his insides twisting and turning, the acid in his stomach lurching at each thought. He’s basically cheating on Ginny, and hadn’t he been the one jealous at the sight of her and her boyfriends a few years ago?

Oh how those days seems like a lifetime ago.

_Did you ever really love her in the first place?_

If Harry thinks too much, he knows he might explode.

The episodes and attacks stopped coming in regularly after the first year, after countless potions and spells and visits to St. Mungo’s, but they still happened and whenever they did, Harry always felt like he couldn’t get out of bed.

Harry pulled himself to sit up, letting the scarf wrap lazily around him. It’s  
like Severus put a warming charm on it, with how much more warmth it seems to give Harry than the much bigger fire by the foot of the bed. The fireplace, crackling as it did, seems to hold less warmth than Harry would like, but the scarf is a welcome company in the cold and lonely hours to come.

Harry doubts he’ll sleep. Not only is it dangerous for him, but he never really learned to sleep without Ginny after they got married.

Except when he had—

Severus.

Harry moves to get the notebook, wrapping his cold fingers around the black leather and bringing it onto pristine white sheets. It looks like a shadow, stark against immaculate white, some kind of misplaced object in the bright room. Harry imagines Severus to be like that too, those black eyes always having been too dark to be in anything but the dark.

Harry feels the back of his hand itch. Maybe he, too, even with his bright green eyes, belong in the dark along with Severus.

Besides, Harry isn’t an angel either.

Harry flips the pages with utmost care to the next story—the next keepsake. Harry doesn’t know why he seems to have named it that, though it made sense to him. Keepsake. Artifact. Memorabilia, of some sorts.

It sounds like a masochistic thing to do, really. To keep something in memory of a horror from one’s life.

But, Harry thinks, at least Severus’ objects were in secluded corners or the most unnoticeable of places; objects that are objects that cannot breathe nor live nor grow. For Harry, they are faces and connections and living, breathing people, souls that think and act and _feel_. And he keeps them close, never letting go. Even if they’re living reminders of what Harry had done and what he’d lost in the process.

 _Who_ he’d lost in the process.

Snuggling deeper in the Slytherin scarf, smelling faintly of bitterness and old shoes, Harry begins to read the next bits of Severus’ notebook.

> _A Stray Shard From A Bottle Of Firewhisky_
> 
> _At least a week ago, Dad and Mum fought while I was in the room and Dad threw his bottle of Firewhisky. I had been scraped by some flying shard that probably flew past me, since I had been by the wall and the bottle got thrown there, and the shards just went everywhere when it shattered._
> 
> _Yesterday, when they fought again with me in the room, they fought in the sitting room and I managed to wedge myself between two book cases if ever they remember I’m here._
> 
> _Something poked me from a bookcase, and when I looked, it was a shard from the Firewhisky bottle. It got squeezed between the wall and the shelf, and when their screaming got louder, I thought it would be better if I just stared at the shard while hoping they don’t notice me in the shadows._
> 
> _My reflection looked distorted on the shard, reflecting just half my face while the rest of it could either be traced nonexistent on the wall or seen on the other side of the glass. I examine my face closely on the glass, ignoring its stain of probably dried alcohol, and end up looking down onto my mismatching clothes._
> 
> _Mum’s coat, Dad’s old pants, and some shirt Mum got from what was a neighbor I think._
> 
> _Three sizes too big. An entire foot too long. And then the shirt looked like a nightgown as much as my shoes looked like clown shoes._
> 
> _Another shout._
> 
> _Maybe I could creep up into my room? Unnoticed, like how I usually go during one of their episodes. I could be hiding in a corner like this, between them like a few days ago, or somewhere else around them like other times, and I’d just be silent there and not move a muscle and they won’t even remember I’m there._
> 
> _Even when they stand up and the dishes crash, and Mum’s soup grows cold and sometimes splatters on the floor._
> 
> _For the first time in my life, I decided I could creep out of their notice and up to my room. I’ve never done that before, braved myself up to escape. So I tried to creep away, pressing on the books and watching for any sign of them noticing me._
> 
> _I caught my father’s eye._
> 
> _That wasn’t a pleasant night._

Harry shudders at the mere words. He didn’t even want to know what that meant, what happened next, or what could have been the worst night if that was just not a pleasant night.

The fire crackles at the end of the room, and Harry suddenly wishes the curtains aren’t so nice, suddenly wishes the sheets were black or green or blue, anything dark even if the bedposts would be silver, anything so that Harry wouldn’t have to try and block all the light and any kind of semblance to it.

Harry remembers being a kid and having all but taken a step to fix his standing position, Uncle Vernon having told him to stay right there in that spot and not move at all.

Harry had been locked in his room—if that damned place under the stairs could be called a room, though it was the best he could hope for unless he wanted a doghouse—and starved for well over two weeks, only let out twice a day to go to the bathroom and for no other reason. Uncle Vernon kept watch over him even in the bathroom, making sure he didn’t soak for too long or leave any bit of his nonexistent dirt in their bathroom.

Harry had just obeyed, knowing there was no other way around it, knowing he’d just go through worse if he didn’t just follow.

But things had gone worse sometimes. Getting beaten up, shouted at, sometimes made to bleed for at least an hour before getting patched up by Aunt Petunia fussing over how her house was going to be filthy if she wouldn’t.

He had thought maybe she cared even just the littlest bit, that maybe she was the reason he wasn’t a street kid somewhere.

But then she proved that time and time again, he meant nothing in this household to her, her husband, nor their child because he was never even supposed to be there.

And he had just gone with it. Because, was there anything else he could do?

Harry could nearly feel Severus on the pages, even more than when he watched Severus’ memories in the Pensieve. That was the closest he had ever been to the man, seeing as Severus Snape let on nothing about himself, nothing he would not be pleased to hear on any other person’s lips, keeping all his cards close and only putting down those he knew was enough to trick the person playing with him.

Then Harry met him in that bar that night.

But bodies on bodies isn’t close enough, lips on lips and raking teeth and desperate cries aren’t in any sense close enough, because it isn’t bad dreams and it isn’t nightmare memories, it isn’t favorite foods or dream homes or special places, just bodies and release and reprieve from whatever the hell life had become.

Harry caresses the page and finds a stray tear angling its way onto the page. Harry wipes it before it falls, scared it might desecrate the pages, but more afraid it might erase all he has left of Severus because, he has to face it, he will never find Severus like this.

No leads, none at all, and it’s not like he could hunt around in the Ministry or somewhere to look for Severus Snape.

Snape’s dead. Out of existence. The thought of his beating heart banished from the thought of any wizard and witch in existence, his portrait already hanging in the Headmaster’s Office like the rest of the Headmasters who’ve gone on.

But Merlin forbid if Severus is out of Harry’s heart.

Harry flips the page carefully, Summoning an unsuspecting flower from the bottom of a drawer and slipping it onto the page before closing the notebook.

Harry’s thoughts begin to fog with memories from his past, hardly handled grief from the past three years, heartbreak and confusion and falling in love, and all the hell that’s ever broke loose because Harry Potter is Harry Potter. Severus—no, Snape, lest Harry sees Severus as the Professor he had—had been right all along.

And it doesn’t slip Harry’s grasp how Snape and Severus are the same person, because without the Professor, who is the Person?

That’s enough for tonight, Harry thought. The thoughts are getting as random and dangerous as they get, and he’d rather stop here than when it’s at the point he’d rather not remember. Ginny’s not here tonight and he’d rather not have to force her home, not when she could be enjoying the night of her life. So he gets up and pours himself a shot of scotch, knowing Firewhisky tonight will just bring about unpleasant memories and unbidden feelings.

Harry isn’t going to sleep tonight, but that’s something he already lives with.


	9. Flashback

When Ginny comes home, it's to the sight of Harry collapsed on their bed, glass of scotch long forgotten and spilled on the floor. She waves her wand and cleans it up, dumping the scotch on the sink knowing neither of them will be drinking the remainder. The soiled liquid swirls down the drain, and Ginny whisks the glass away into their bedroom cupboard, cleaning itself as it went.

Ginny, as she always did, Levitates Harry to the head of the bed, settling him in a proper position while he sleeps.

She strips down and changes her clothes, watching for the tiniest grunt from Harry in case it became something more.

Throwing her dirty clothes into the hamper, she’s glad the only sound Harry’s made is a snore. And with Harry, that’s a good thing, even if for Ron it was always irritating.

She wonders how her brother and Hermione are right now, what they’re doing at their home. Ginny wonders if they ever have nights where they can’t keep thoughts of the War out of their head, if they ever have really bad nightmares or days when the past plagues them like a haunting ghost.

Ginny climbs into bed beside Harry, trying not to remember seeing his lifeless form in Hagrid’s arms before the final battle commenced.

Just then does she notices the green and silver scarf wrapped around him, snug and cozy and warm.

So the bloke is a Slytherin, is he? She wonders if Harry’s obsession had done something to Harry to make him like this, lovesick every moment he and the bloke don’t spend together.

It had started when she left, hadn’t it? Since when she came back, Harry’s nightmares were suddenly as bad as they were when the War ended. It took three months before it got anywhere near normal, at least for Harry that year; for Harry’s sake she wished then that she’d never left.

But she had and he’d gone off. The past is the past and it’s written in stone, never to be changed unless completely necessary.

She settles in bed beside him, brushing some strands away from his forehead. His hair is getting long. He should get a haircut soon. She slides his glasses off and places it on the bedside table, careful to reach around him and not wake him at all. There, she finds, is a quill and a bottle of ink.

His stuff is his, and hers is hers.

She bets the bloke had tricked Harry when she was gone, convincing Harry of things that Harry would likely fall for. Regretting not making him sleep at Ron and Hermione’s instead, she guesses he probably slept with the guy while she was gone.

Maybe just a few times. Maybe every night.

And then, she guesses, when the bloke found out she’d be coming home, he’d tried to stuff Harry and Harry realized he’d been played, which made him relapse and for that reason, Ginny wants to snap the bloke’s neck.

Playing with Harry Potter, eh? Even if she isn’t his wife, she’s still bloody well his friend and she’d lie to herself if she’d say she wouldn’t give a few punches to defend him.

If she’s right, she might just fear for the bloke if Ron and Hermione find out.

After all they’ve been through with Harry, she’s sure they’d give the bloke a few nasty things to remember never to mess with Harry Potter. And then there’s the rest of them: McGonagall, Neville, Luna (though what Luna would do, Ginny’s actually scared to know—for all their sakes), the rest of the DA, even the ghosts and, of course, Peeves.

What if the bloke is a Hogwarts student?

It all magically fits, of course, since she had left in the summer.

So it could work. Except when she draws back and settles on her side of the bed, she catches a whiff of the scent of the scarf, and while expecting a Slytherin’s healthy dosage of pure-blood supremacy, she smells something she hadn’t smelled in three years.

Bitterness and old shoes.

Potion fumes and dungeon air.

Severus Snape.

She sits up, staring at Harry’s sleeping form, shocked. Snape? _Snape_? It couldn’t possibly— The man’s bloody dead! But maybe, maybe Harry just gets reminded of Snape by this guy? Maybe Harry’s using the guy as a Snape decoy or something?

But then, Ginny thinks, why did it affect Harry so much?

Except the dead couldn’t be brought back, not even by magic, not even by the Resurrection Stone. Harry told her what the Resurrection Stone had been like, seeing ghosts more like, not actually bringing people back to life.

It couldn’t be Snape.

Ginny slides back to bed, taking one last look at Harry, before letting herself fall asleep.

She knows it’s a bloke and she knows it’s a Slytherin. But Merlin forbid that Severus Snape is still alive.

He couldn’t be, could he?

Maybe it’s just the liquor. Ginny had always been bad at holding her alcohol.

* * *

Ron, as thick as he is, didn’t need to be told more than once about things that matter. Even if he sucks at Transfiguring a box into a pair of Muggle jeans, or turning Crookshanks back into a cat from being turned into a pillow (and it was an accident, dammit, an _accident_ ), Ron knows better than to be told more than once about things that matter.

So when he remembers Harry’s reply while they flew going to the Potter Residence, he can’t help but think it all makes sense. Maybe not all of it, but some pretty important parts.

He’s missing a lot of the puzzle, he’s sure, but he knows this isn’t something to take lightly, and so he hadn’t told Hermione for the reason that Harry might not be ready, or ever be ready for anyone to know.

As much of a joke it could be—and a bloody big joke it would sell out to be—Ron knows it’s real. Real and true and probably toxic.

But it isn’t a joke. Ron isn’t a Legilimens, but he knows when his best mate is serious.

When he finds himself thinking about it, that time when he talked to Harry, and the way Harry spoke that name with such reverence, such importance, such intensity, Ron tries to keep his mind on one track. Harry. Harry, Harry, Harry. Because the bloke sounds like he’s done it over himself, giving his heart up to someone who’s dead.

And on the damn impossible occasion that Snape isn’t dead, Ron’s nearly sure Harry has no hope with him. Snape is, not only twice their age, but had loathed Harry just because of looking so much like the bloke who made Snape’s school life a living hell. Not only that, but Snape was in love with— _is_ in love with, if the dungeon bat is still magically alive—Harry’s own mother. That doesn’t even mention how Harry is like the exact replica of his parents: everything basically like his father, and his eyes exactly his mother’s.

But, just thinking about his best mate, Ron doesn’t know how to make it better. From what it sounds like to him, Harry’s done for. Given up. Eaten by it already. And there’s no turning back from that, just like how there was no turning back when Ron realized it’s Hermione, and it’s always been, and it always will be.

Ron thinks maybe Harry just needs another bloke in his life. But it’s just like him and Lavender—it only helps realize what’s really for you.

So Ron would think, ah, alcohol. A weekly visit to the bar might do the trick.

Then he remembers how Harry nearly got an alcohol addiction when they were all stupid enough to bring him to multiple occasions where there was drinking and dancing. Not like any of them could say no, but still. Thankfully, the mediwitch at St. Mungo’s nearly murdered them to make sure Harry wasn’t getting anywhere near alcohol for at least half a year, and soon enough, Harry was better.

Ron thinks, after that, at least a year and a half after the War and at least a year ago, that might’ve been the best expanse of Harry’s life.

A few social functions, most of the time just meeting up with friends, some excursions with Luna, and most of all just relaxing where they could relax at the time.

No Durselys. No Voldy. No prophecy or Chosen One or anything else like that.

He was just Harry. And if anything, Ron knows that’s all Harry ever wanted.

After all they’ve been through, Ron gets why Harry hated all that stuff. It sounded all so good, all so wonderful being in the spotlight of every witch and wizard’s thoughts, but then it came down to having to endure day after day of unreasonable demands, rumors of all kinds circulating and being thrown at him. Being just his friend, and he already got surrounded with all that Voldemort business. Horcruxes, Hallows, Dumbledore, Death Eaters; basically being the common ground of good and bad. The good want you to fight, the bad want to kill you.

And being a blood traitor wasn’t exactly a good thing either.

Now that Ron looks at it, all three of them had a death sentence above their head at some point.

Muggle-born. Blood traitor. Boy-Who-Lived.

Harry lived alright. But now that he thought about it, Ron thinks that even when he lived, Harry kept a part of himself locked away afraid that it might shatter the bubble that meant Harry was happy and undisturbed. Maybe Harry had kept it locked away so much that he forgot about it.

And when it finally came back out, Harry exploded.

“Ra-on! Row-n! Ron-ALD! Whewie! Oh Roh-knee!” Ron nearly stumbles on the stairs while he hurries to get Hermione. She seems to always think she had such a high tolerance for alcohol, and even though she does, it shouldn’t be her premise for drinking herself off the edge every time.

Then again, he quite enjoys her making a fool out of herself. It makes him look better. And it makes it easier for him not to make a fool out of himself when he’s trying to be romantic to her.

“Hey! ‘Mione, careful!” McGonagall—no, Minerva, and as long as he’ll take to adjust to that, Ron’s gonna do what the woman says because she’s scary when she wants to be, if he’ll be honest—gives him an apologetic smile as she helps bring Hermione into the house and onto the couch. “Thank you for bringing her home, Minerva. You know how she is.”

“Oh nonsense, Ronald, we were just having a little fun. I suppose she has the most fun among us, and I’m sure she deserves it. Now,” Minerva pats his shoulder, turning around to leave. “I shall leave you and Hermione to rest for the night, as I’m sure you need it.

“Painkilling potion in her pocket.” Minerva smiles warmly at him before Apparating at the doorway, closing the door as she leaves.

The woman always had style, but she seems to have more style when she’s drunk.

“Ronnie, carry me!” Hermione holds out her arms desperately, and Ron hooks his arms underneath her as she loops her arms around his neck. She’s beautiful, and he loves carrying her off like this.

“Hey look, ‘Mione! The boat is rocking!” He says while he rocks her, and a small smile forms on her lips.

“It’s the boat is sinking, Ron.” But she’s half-asleep when she says it, the smile still on her face.

He fishes out the potion in her pocket before setting it on their bedside table and putting her into her pajamas. He settles in beside her, her arms automatically looping around him, as he sits up and continues reading her favorite book in the dim lamplight.

_“I know I probably shouldn’t ask this,” Ron starts, slowly lifting the broom to zoom over the clouds, “and ‘Mione has told me lots of times to keep my mouth shut about it from you, but I need to ask you.”_

_“Alright, go on.”_

_“Whose death keeps replaying in your head?”_

_Without skipping a beat, Harry replies, “Snape.”_

_They both become silent for a while, and Ron probes in his mind, thinking and looking and wondering why._

_“Why?” Ron finally asks, their shoes skimming the clouds._

_“I don’t know.” And it sounds like there’s a deeper meaning behind the three words, but Ron doesn’t press._

_“You haven’t had it this bad since after the War.”_

_“I know.”_

_“So what made it?”_

_“I don’t know.” Hearing a tone of finality, Ron decides to fly in silence, not saying another word._

Ron thinks maybe in all those three years, Harry had kept it from them and thought better of telling any of them. Harry might’ve told himself it wasn’t even worth thinking about.

And, Ron thinks, maybe at some point Harry’s mind just couldn’t take it, and his feelings had exploded somehow, and Harry finally couldn’t ignore it.

Bookmarking the page after his last, Ron puts off the lamplight and slides into bed with Hermione in his arms.

And then after three long years, Ron thinks, Harry had to face the fact that he had fallen in love with Severus Snape.

It made sense to Ron, he thinks before he falls asleep, especially that when they mourned Snape, Harry was the only one who came back every day, then once every week, then once every month for no reason at all, and the only one who had stayed after the funeral that composed only a few people, only those few that Harry thought Snape would trust to attend his funeral.

Minerva was there, as well as Flitwick and Pomona and Madam Pomfrey. Hagrid, giant as he is, Harry thought Snape would secretly delight in a warm presence. The Golden Trio, as they were, along with Luna, Neville, and Ginny. Bill and Fleur, Charlie, Percy, George, Arthur and Molly. Kingsley. And none of the Malfoys or Death Eaters, no more of the Order since Harry thought Snape would grimace at the thought of so many people.

So it was a small ceremony, just nineteen of them with Kingsley officiating. Small, silent, solemn. Harry said Snape would like it.

Ron falls asleep with Hermione in his arms, the past in his memory as he gets ready to relive another day in his dreams.

* * *

Harry wakes up to a warmth behind him, a nose nuzzled into his hair while the Slytherin scarf still wraps around him. She’s seen it, he’s sure. What she thinks of it, he doesn’t know if he wants to know.

Harry pushes gently until she lets him go, folding the scarf on the bedside table before sliding open the top drawer, taking the notebook as well as the ink and quill.

In their walk-in, she owns the left side while he owns the right. Her side smells so fresh, so happy and cheerful and at peace. His side smells frantic, never quite knowing how to go about and always suspecting things could go wrong.

In a far corner, he casts a Fidelius charm and sets the items there, before he collects his clothes to take a bath.

In Ron’s arms, Hermione stirs awake. She feels the onslaught of hangover coming, so, knowing Ron and Minerva, she feels for the Painkilling potion as she stumbles her way into the bathroom.

Emptying her contents feels like lightening her head. Flushing down the dreadful sight, Hermione washes her face and washes her mouth on the sink, gulping down the Painkilling potion in one shot.

She tells herself over and over: she is not drinking that much again. But she comes home every time they do this the most drunk she had ever been. And Ron, the sweetheart he is, tucks her in bed beside him whenever she does it.

Back in their bedroom, she spots Ron awake, and he smiles at her sleepily as she approaches him. She sets the empty phial down on their bedside table, and she snuggles back into bed with him.

After taking a bath, Harry takes out the notebook and hides it in his coat. He writes Ginny a quick note, saying he’ll just go out for a walk, before he goes out of the house and Apparates to the park. He goes to a spot there with all the charms they had put up while on the Horcrux Hunt plus a Fidelius charm, so that only he, Ron, and Hermione could get into the place unless they give someone else permission.

This is where they agreed they’d come every year to talk. About the War. About everything. And it helps, really, but for now Harry wishes Ron and Hermione won’t decide to come here, here and now.

He flips open the notebook with mitten-encased fingers, to the flower bookmark he had placed the night earlier.

> _The Magician’s Nephew_

Hermione leans on Ron’s chest, feeling his heart beat beneath her ear as she listens to him breathe. She remembers fearing she’ll never see him again, remembers screaming and shouting and crying when he left. She remembers those messy years, at the peak of adolescence, when she had become rather bitchy whenever he did something that she thought insensitive of her feelings.

And then, she remembers Harry.

Harry, who’d been there the entire time. Harry, who had smiled and laughed with them, who had watched them fall in love as they watched him fall in despair. Harry, who as much as he’d like to trick them, can never really deceive them after all this time.

Harry, who she wonders about sometimes, worried as much as she knows Ron is, because some part of her that she wouldn’t mind admitting to be motherly instincts says Harry’s hiding something that he’d be better off telling her and Ron.

Harry could take his time to be ready, but she hopes he doesn’t take too long in fear of something going wrong.

> _There were many books among our shelves. But, with Mum and Dad constantly fighting and Mum always cleaning the mess, I was always resolved to spending days in my room, never being able to get a book from the shelves to read in my spare time._
> 
> _Dad would ask me if I was a girl again if he found that I liked reading books._
> 
> _But, on the days that I went out of the house and hid behind the trees, I usually would be able to smuggle a book out of the house, if only because it’s the book Mum let me read after she gave in and told me I was a wizard._
> 
> _The book is called ‘The Magician’s Nephew’, and I’ve read it over and over again since Mum told me I was a wizard, even if Dad told me having magic is a foolish thing and even if Mum sometimes told me I was stupid to think I’m free to just use it._
> 
> _One time, I had read a little too much and got home a little late, just in time to be in the sitting room when my Dad arrived. I hid the book behind me just as Mum came into the room, and I could hear her scrunch her face up at Dad’s scent._
> 
> _He smelled like alcohol and vomit, but I’ve gotten used to it._

Hermione settles herself against Ron, thinking back while he strokes her hair and reads, her eyes looking off to the ceiling in the way that she does when she thinks. She thinks back to being an ordinary girl who can do weird things, things her parents never could explain to her and things that she could never really believe. She thinks back to finding an odd looking person in their sitting room, dressed in mismatched clothes and although she had wanted to point it out, the person’s first words to her as soon as she sat down had unnerved her.

 _“Ms. Hermione Granger,”_ and not only had Hermione never been called ‘miss’ before, but the look in those eyes made her understand even more how serious a conversation it was _“have you ever done things no other kid could do?”_

Yes, she had thought, and inquiry took over her then knowing this person would be telling her why. She had just nodded then.

_“Did you ever consider that maybe the reason behind it all is magic?”_

Thinking back, Hermione can never seem to place how she was able to absorb it so quickly, how she could believe that blunt and anti-climactic reveal to her wizardry. It made more sense to her if she, like her seventeen-year-old self, would have needed a lot of persuading to believe in something she’s only known to be a fairy tale. But maybe, Hermione thinks, in her innocence as an eleven-year-old, in her in-between leaving childhood and entering adolescence, she hadn’t quite let go of the notion that maybe fiction wasn’t all fiction yet, that her belief and underlying wish for some things to be true led her to never questioning, not for one moment, that she is, in fact, a witch.

But Hermione’s glad she never questioned it. Instead, she buried herself in the books she had been given, books that told her of the wizarding world and Hogwarts, and everything she could only dream of but now lived in and nearly died for.

Harry couldn’t help gulping at the thought. Severus had been so young, and yet his childhood never played close to a kid’s world.

> _Dad had begun to yell at Mum already, but he quieted as soon as he noticed Mum looking behind him. So he looked at me and I looked away from Mum and looked at him._
> 
> _His eyes looked murderous, completely and utterly terrifying especially when he began to look away from my face and down my arms that I hid behind my back._
> 
> _“What do you have behind you?” He said. And he spoke in a dangerous way that I had heard him use before, and it just made me shake a little more visibly because he couldn’t find the book, he couldn’t touch it._
> 
> _He yanked me towards him and forcefully took the book from my hands. I told him to give it back, and I knew it was a mistake to have let myself speak like that as soon as it left my mouth. I expected Dad to yell at me about speaking back to him, but his outraged eyes just looked away from me and to my book, and began tearing it apart._
> 
> _I just remember shouting “NO!” and suddenly Dad’s hand was bleeding, as if he had a hundred paper cuts on him, while the book flew out of his hands and into mine._
> 
> _He hates magic, and I felt his hatred when he slowly turned to look at me then. Mum had then put herself between us, looking back to me and telling me to go back into my room._

Hermione closes her eyes and snuggles closer to Ron. His scent brings her back and makes her feel at home, makes her feel comfort like she’s never known before. She remembers NEWT Potions with Slughorn, and Amortentia and Lavender Brown. She remembers that entire year that was nothing but a rollercoaster of _I don’t like him_ and _I do_ , with a side of Harry’s nights with Dumbledore and Slughorn and reality as it may be called.

She remembers forgetting for a moment that the world wasn’t at war, that people weren’t dying and that the stuff on the Prophet had been regular occurrences. She remembers unconsciously pretending Sirius hadn’t died the previous year, pretending they hadn’t dealt with Umbridge and that they didn’t learn DA spells for a reason, pretending all of a sudden because her feelings had nearly taken over her, but then being shaken out of her reverie the night Dumbledore died.

Hermione thinks back to her first year, being an innocent eleven-year-old sorted into Gryffindor, becoming friends with Harry and Ron, nearly getting killed by a troll and playing deadly Wizard’s Chess. She remembers Quirrell and Snape and Nicholas Flamel, Fluffy and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Hermione remembers thinking that was the most dangerous thing she has ever done, and now she thinks that was probably the safest among all the things she’s done.

And then there’s Harry of course. Harry, who literally died and rose back to life.

> _When I reached my room, Dad’s punches had already gotten louder and their shouts were already turning into screams. I went to my corner and covered my ears, and then I realized the book was out of my hands._
> 
> _The next day after breakfast, I noticed the book back on its shelf, a little bloodstained and ripped apart._
> 
> _I never took it out again._

Harry inserts the flower bookmark—a lily, an asphodel specifically—between the pages and hangs his head back and sighs. He watches his breath puff out into a small cloud, cold air fogging his glasses while it mixed with his warm breath.

Severus never made it seem like he could’ve possibly gone through these things. At first glance, he didn’t seem to be someone who would have had a rough childhood and an even rougher life, once being treated as dispensable and a burden then becoming treated like a bishop that had to be protected only until necessary.

Then again, with his name clouding other people’s judgement, no one ever took Harry Potter to have been starved by his Muggle relatives before he knew he was a wizard, only ever being the Boy-Who-Lived rather than a boy who never actually knew what it’s like to live.

First, he trudged through living with the Dursley’s. Then he bore with the weight of his title and Voldemort coming back every year to try and kill him. Then he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders when he had to get the Horcruxes and collect them all, and destroy them just as he had to kill Voldemort. Then he had died and ended Voldemort (because saying he killed Voldemort makes Harry feel disgusting; it makes Harry sound to himself as if he had murdered a man in cold blood at seventeen, which in fact, he did, but Harry doesn’t like thinking about it like that) after Neville killed the snake. Then it was a flurry of being a war hero, Order of Merlin and parties and all that, interviews and talk shows and everything, _everything_ , until finally they seemed tired of him but then, he met Severus in a Muggle pub.

It was like no matter what Harry did, he could never run away.

Hermione looks to their clock, and notices it’s near noon. As if sensing her intention, Ron closes the book after bookmarking the page, kissing her on the forehead before leaving the bed.

“I’ll cook, you rest.” He leaves her with a longing look, and she knows he doesn’t want to leave the bed because lazy days with her is the best, but he loves it just as much as he loves doing things for her, so he closes the door behind him in promise, as if to reassure her she’s going to love her lunch.

She always does, when he cooks. He seems to be good at anything if he’s doing it for her.

So Hermione settles herself back, lying down on their bed and spreading her body to catch the entirety of it. She can smell traces of Ron’s shampoo on his pillow, and she can’t help herself when her head turns to sniff him. Once upon a time, she had sniffed this from Amortentia, and suddenly four years later she can drown in it without being anywhere near any love potion.

Hermione remembers being a Hogwarts student, and every memory is lit up in red and gold and Ron and Harry. She remembers Sorcerer’s Stones and Time Turners, Chambers of Secrets and cursed diaries. She remembers Sirius and Azkaban and dementors, Divination and Grimmauld Place and SPEW. She remembers Dobby and Kreacher and the Order of the Phoenix, Remus, Tonks, Mad-Eye, and Kingsley, Mundungus and Fred and George and Extendable Ears. She remembers the Tri-Wizard Tournament and Krum, Voldemort and Harry and the Ministry of Magic. She remembers Draco and Crabbe and Goyle, Hallows and Horcruxes and Malfoy Manor.

Hermione remembers being a kid and dreaming of going on adventures, getting lost in books to revel in the feeling of being a heroine going on dangerous quests and fighting beside amazing people. She looks back, and before she falls asleep, wonders what her child self would say about her life as soon as she stepped onto Platform 9 ¾.

> _The Peeling Ceiling Wallpaper_
> 
> _Mum and Dad fought again last night, and Dad was soaked in alcohol._
> 
> _I was lucky enough to have come home before Dad did, especially since I had seen his figure somewhere at the end of the street as soon as I was three blocks away. I had fast-walked then, reaching the house before Dad could reach five blocks away._
> 
> _Being drunk, I doubt Dad could’ve noticed that his son had just entered their house, not some random kid in the blur of everyday Spinner’s End._
> 
> _I had got up the upstairs hallway without Mum noticing, but couldn’t quite have gotten into my room without a sound, so I settled for the end of the hallway as soon as I heard the bam of the door behind my Dad._
> 
> _I could smell him stronger than usual. Mum had banged the door to the kitchen as soon as he came in, and before he could utter a word, she shouted at him._
> 
> _“You come home drunk every time but spare me the bloody liberty of pointing out that I never said you could come home as if you bathed in alcohol!”_
> 
> _I remembered the night that Dad had thrown a bottle of Firewhisky, and realized it wasn’t a Muggle drink after all. I tended to not think too much about the nights when he comes home and the nights that are unpleasant, but tonight I thought maybe it would do me better to think back instead of listen._
> 
> _I never actually listened anyway. They’re just always so loud that they penetrate my thoughts even if I try to block them._
> 
> _Going back to the Firewhisky, a thought immediately struck it down and kept me from feeding myself thoughts to tone down Mum and Dad’s arguing in the sitting room. Dad’s probably gotten so drunk that he was able to find a wizard’s pub somewhere, or maybe some wizard smuggled him the bottle or whatever._
> 
> _But Dad’s Dad, and I doubt he would’ve cared whether or not the alcohol had magic. I think all he cares about is that it would be strong, strong enough or too strong, for as long as it helped him forget he had a freak for a wife and a freak for a son._
> 
> _Well, joke’s on him. Mum and I are special. Mum should’ve never married him._
> 
> _I hate this all so much._
> 
> _When their shouting got even louder, I found myself staring at the ceiling and noticed that in the corner I faced, the wallpaper there was peeling. The peeling was so horrible, it put the dingy walls to shame. I found the edges and rips rather interesting, how the adhesive didn’t hold anymore and how dust was collecting in places._
> 
> _Mum and Dad just kept fighting downstairs. I don’t even care if it lasted the entirety of the night._
> 
> _I wonder, what would happen if I just left?_

Harry remembers running away and boarding the Knight Bus in his third year, but still coming back the next summer. He wonders if Severus ever really left, but had to come back for some reason or other. Harry wonders if what he felt with the Dursleys was what Severus felt with Eileen and Tobias. Then Harry remembers that Severus had no Order, had no Dumbledore, had no one to tell them to treat him better like Harry did, and suddenly Harry feels ashamed of ever thinking he and Severus are anything alike in that sense.

Harry had Remus and Sirius and Dumbledore, Mad-Eye and Tonks and Kingsley and the rest of the Order to keep the Dursleys from maltreating him all over again. Harry had Hagrid to scare off Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia and Dudley, especially after that incident before Harry’s first year, the night of Harry’s birthday.

Severus never had anyone. Never. He only ever had himself and Lily some time later.

But eventually, Severus lost Lily, and for a moment Harry thinks he understands. For a moment, Harry could nearly feel Severus beside him, potion-stained fingers curling around his own. For a moment, Harry could see his Potions Professor and the Death Eater, the double agent for the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters, the Head of Slytherin House and the Half-Blood Prince, and Harry could see the man they called Severus Snape in his chambers where no one could see him, black eyes so broken that no tears fell, because Severus was tired and he was so tired he couldn’t even spare himself a moment to cry. It was the kind of despair that was in so deep, it felt like numbness, and Harry could nearly see Severus thanking Merlin and every god in existence when his life nearly ended, because the pain and the loneliness and the emptiness would finally be gone.

And Harry wishes he could have been there, then he remembers that he was. Harry buries his face in his hands. He had been there, but he set at least half of the burden on Severus’ shoulders. No, if anything he was the reason why Severus went through all of it in the first place. Had Harry’s parents never given birth to Harry, Severus wouldn’t have to live a life like that.

Harry breathes in a cold bite of air. No point thinking self-depriving thoughts. Those things were over and done, and the past is as reversible as death. And even with magic, no one can bring the dead back to life.

> _A One-By-One Square Inch of Grime_
> 
> _Or it came close to it. Of course, with dirt and mud and grime, they can never conform to a specific shape, or space, or part of the floor like Mum and I have learned. But, more or less, the grime was something like a one-by-one square inch. Maybe half, or even three quarters, of an inch high._
> 
> _Or something that came close to it. I could never be sure, even if I spent at least two hours staring at it last night, my soup as cold as the night by the time I tried to sip at it again. It tasted awful, but then again, nothing tastes like anything but awful here._
> 
> _Anyway, Dad came home last night. Before dinner, actually. Mum had just finished cooking, and I was setting the table. I nearly didn’t set up a place for him, but just before he could notice, I’d put the plate and silverware and glass already._
> 
> _The one-by-one square inch of grime was reachable for my shoe. I could nudge at it and watch it somehow squish because of my toe, but I never got any of the grime on my shoe._

When Hermione dreams, she tries to manipulate it sometimes. When she starts dreaming of a Battle where Harry never wakes up in Hagrid’s arms, she tries making Neville end Voldemort, and sometimes she makes Voldemort just fall of the cliff after Neville kills Nagini. When she starts dreaming of Ron not having been missed by Nagini, she imagines the snake throwing him up just before Neville kills it.

Sometimes Hermione imagines Snape dying much more tragically. Sometimes he ends up never having died at all, but at the expense that Draco dies and Lucius and Narcissa nearly drive each other to death with grief. Sometimes she dreams of a completely different life, one where Harry gets Sorted into Slytherin and Ron in Hufflepuff and she in Ravenclaw, and they never meet and Voldemort never comes back.

Sometimes Hermione dreams of Ron never coming back, of just growing old with Harry in the Forest of Dean and learning to steal supplies every time they move. Hermione dreams of Harry leaving them, of just giving up and going, just like that.

Then there are the times, like now, that Hermione dreams of nothing related to the past.

Sometimes Hermione dreams of coming to King’s Cross on September 1st and finding no people on Platform 9 ¾, and then she’ll just turn around and Harry and Ron would be smiling at her. When she takes a look behind them, Ginny, Bill, Fred and George, Percy, Molly, and Arthur would be looking back at her, and behind her would be Dumbledore and Snape. Sirius would be there too, and Remus and Tonks, and it’s like no one would have died and King’s Cross becomes the Great Hall, and the gold will be more golden than ever and the ceiling would be a beautiful blue sky with puffy white clouds.

And when Hermione wakes up, she’d feel light but heavy and empty, because for a second she’d have convinced herself it had all been real, that no one had died and they all live happily ever after, but then she’ll wake up and remember that the War really happened, that there really were Horcruxes and Voldemort and the Battle of Hogwarts. She’ll remember, and she’ll feel a part of herself crumble, not because of renewed grief, but because she had hoped and she had been happy but it had all been just a dream. A figment of her imagination: happily ever after.

Harry never believed—still doesn’t, he reckons—in happily ever after. After all he’s been through, he’d think he’d finally have it.

But he couldn’t blame Severus. He just couldn’t. No matter how much he wants to, to make things easier so he can just love Ginny again and devote the rest of his life to her, and live a happy life until the age of some one hundred or more, have kids and grandkids and just _happily ever after_ , but he just couldn’t quite pretend anymore no matter what he did. It is just, always, that he couldn’t blame Severus. Couldn’t hate Severus. Not even if Harry wanted to. And he does, he does, somehow he does.

> _Dad, as always, reeked of alcohol and a bit of vomit. He smelled strongly like the pub he probably could sleep in if he didn’t actually feel obligated to come home and terrorize his wife and only son every day, but seeing as he spends at least sixteen hours a day in the pub, I think it would be rather odd if he didn’t start smelling like it yet._
> 
> _But of course, the soup was too stale and had Mum put more salt it would turn salty, and the soup never tasted good no matter what was to be done anyway. Maybe it would taste better to him if he added some of his brandy, or some bourbon or scotch or whisky._
> 
> _Dad had complained, and Mom mocked him for it. They went back and forth, as usual. Then the argument progressed and soup turned into cooking turned into magic, and as was again the topic of why their marriage just couldn’t work._
> 
> _Why did they sodding marry anyway, if they knew it wouldn’t work out? I would just work myself up thinking, so I resorted to staring down below the table at the one-by-one inch of grime, subtly kicking it with my shoe not that they’d notice, until Mum (or was it Dad) stormed out of the room and slammed the kitchen door. The other one followed, and there were crashing things in the sitting room. Books, maybe the couch; I could never tell._
> 
> _It was different but all the same, every time._
> 
> _An hour passed and, knowing they would forget dinner, I cleaned up and crept out of the house, knowing now they wouldn’t care where I went for as long as I would come back before midnight. They never looked for me anyway. Sometimes I feel sure that even if I stay out of the house until two in the morning they wouldn’t come look for me until it was seven._
> 
> _If, and only if, Mum would be done arguing with Dad by that hour._

When Hermione wakes up, she wakes to the echo of Ron’s voice from the kitchen and the echo of the beating of her heart. She feels her heartbeat as if her heart is in the bottom of a chasm, while she is at a cliff. It feels separate from her, and it takes everything for Hermione not to let her tears flow, not to let the misplaced hope choke her as it always did on these occasions, not to let the toxic imaginings chain her down.

So when Hermione wakes up, she pushes herself up immediately, gives herself a second to breathe. And when she comes of the bedroom she shares with Ron, she descends the steps of the staircase as if she hadn’t been on the verge of tears, the waft of his cooking sending delicious tendrils into her nose and keeping away the thoughts of happily ever after.

Because this is it. This is her happily ever after. It may not be what she dreams of, but it’s enough, it’s alright, and it’s _home_.

Harry puts the flower bookmark in between the pages and tucks the notebook into his coat. He takes a deep breath, relishing the bite the cold gives his throat, and closes his eyes as he pushes himself off the bench. His mittens made his hands feel warm, made his hands feel comfy. But deep, deep inside him, Harry feels as if he’s getting frostbite, as if his heart had frozen over, as if there’s no beating in his chest anymore.

When Harry opens his eyes, he stares into the white nothingness in front of him. Alcohol, alcohol would be good. But no, Harry thinks, he isn’t drinking alcohol now. Not right now, not even a generous shot of Firewhisky. No, Harry is going to drink coffee, to wake him up, to maybe give him a bit of feeling, so he isn’t feeling like the skies are gray and time isn’t moving, because nothing feels right to him and he feels like time has stopped until he finds a certain greasy haired man with pained, black eyes.

Harry Apparates into an alley and walks out onto the main street, going off to buy himself a cup of coffee so scalding hot, he’ll forget the gnawing feeling in his chest.

* * *

When Ginny wakes up, it’s too a folded Slytherin scarf on his bedside table and a note that says he’ll be gone for a while. Gone, but where? He never says. But she doesn’t blame him, doesn’t blame him at all, doesn’t blame him for having made her hope that she’ll finally get what she’s been dreaming for ever since she first saw him, ever since his face first got her smitten on Platform 9 and ¾.

No, Ginny just sucks it all up and gets out of bed, fixing the beddings and going off to take a bath.

She’s lucky she could call the Boy-Who-Lived as her husband. But never will she be able to push away the pain that eats away at her, because she can never call Harry hers.

She doesn’t even know when he’ll be back. She thinks she could call herself lucky if he gets back before sunset. Because who knows, and it’s obvious she’ll never know, maybe Harry’s out there with that bloke doing who knows what, who knows where.

But, and Ginny takes a breath, Harry will come back. She knows he will, and he will. And when she steps out of the bath and into their bedroom, she hopes she hides her surprise well enough when she sees him sitting on the bed, cup of coffee in hand and a cup on her bedside table, a pile of coats discarded by his pillow, bright green eyes dulled in the cold winter wind.

He will never be hers, but while she could call him something like that, she tells herself she’ll just enjoy it while it lasts.

“I see you bought us coffee.” Ginny says, trying out for a smile, though knowing it’s one of her worst faked smiles.

“Yeah, I did.” He tries too, but the glimmer in his eyes is like an ember put out too soon, lighting up one second then fading away the next. She brushes it off and picks up her coffee, sipping and sitting on her side of the bed, so his back is to her and her back is to him.

When she takes a sip, she imagines it’s their first day as a married couple, and a tear streaks down her cheek as the memories of their earlier days replay in her mind. She wonders why she’s so emotional today, and she takes a sip of the coffee before setting it down again.

She takes a peek behind her, and she knows Harry has no intention of taking a peek at her.

Ginny takes another sip, and she thinks, well, she’s always been bad at holding her alcohol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! So this chapter is a little extra long, so yes, thank you for reading! Next chapters will probably take a while to upload, but thank you very much for waiting it out! Love y'all lots!
> 
> Always.


	10. Step

It is the end of the holidays, though the snow had yet to clear. The jobs for the Aurors are rolling in, and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had become busy yet again. The forefront of the year brings people in as always, more people on the streets meaning more people getting into trouble. Especially this year that a case of illegally brewed Firewhisky had been caught, more and more wizards and witches were being brought in this winter.

Harry sips on his coffee as he retreats into the back of the elevator. Off to a debriefing, and off to whatever task he’d be given today, be that paperwork or fieldwork.

Everything feels hollow these days. Numb, cold. As cold as if he’s gotten magical frostbite, as if dementors had sucked his soul out and he hadn’t even noticed.

The elevator dings closed, and Harry’s thankful no one comes to ride from any of the floors. He’s thankful for the silence, for the lack of company. He just relishes the sharp sting that goes down his throat when he takes a sip of his scalding coffee, revelling in the lack of sound other than the elevator itself and his own breathing. The boiling hot liquid sends the feeling back into his fingertips, and he relishes the way it makes him _feel_.

The elevator reaches his floor and dings open, and he steps out in time as the first person after him enters. He goes off for the briefing room, already having memorized the way so that every hall and every corner blurs into one seemingly solid path, and not until Harry reaches the door to the briefing room does he take another sip of his coffee. The feeling floods back in his body, and he turns the knob with infinitesimally shaking fingers.

“Ah, Mr. Potter. Right when we were getting to your assignment.” Their Head Auror smiles at him and he smiles back, and after years of being The Boy Who Lived, Harry had mastered the faux smile so well that close to no one can tell it apart from his real smiles.

Those who can tell, though, that it’s a faux smile barely ever talk to Harry about it. They worry; he can see it in their eyes. But they make no move to shed light on it, letting it go knowing there is no way to make it go away.

Some things just are.

“Good morning, everyone. Sorry I’m late.” Harry lets out that little laugh of his, the one that means he’s slightly embarrassed. But even that one is fake, though no one could tell the difference.

Harry makes his way to his seat beside Ron, and he sees in the way Ron smiles that Ron saw and Ron knows. But just like that, Ron puts up a face as if he didn’t know at all, and Harry plays along, as he always has.

It’s been a few months.

“So, as I was saying, Mr. Potter, your assignment for today would be one that will stretch for a week. Not that serious, just lengthy, and it requires you to do a bit of light reading before going into the field. I think I am right to assume you can do the reading within the first couple of days, so by the third day, you can go to fieldwork.” Their Head Auror all but rambles, but Harry doesn’t mind. Sometimes he prefers someone else fill the silence. “In case of need of assistance, we are putting Auror Longbottom and Weasley on speed-Floo for you; just puff a little Floo when in dire need and at least one of them should come for you.”

Their Head Auror looks pointedly at Neville and Ron, who nod with a smile. Harry looks at them and smiles. But his emerald eyes don’t shine, as if a dull sheen coats them, but Neville doesn’t see it and Ron doesn’t bother.

The rest of the assignments get distributed, and the paperworks float to their respective Aurors. Upon getting his pile, Harry bids Ron and Neville goodbye before heading over to his office.

Harry’s thankful he gets his own office, albeit not having such a high position yet. For the sake of the amount of paperwork he has to handle, he had been given an office so he can keep it all in check. At some point, his Auror paperwork had gotten as hefty as his personal paperwork, so he had been allowed his own space to work on both.

Post-War as it is, Harry had many things to manage.

These days, though, his personal paperwork is getting less and less, so the need for an office becomes more a personal need than something quite official. The seclusion makes Harry feel better, rather than having to work with other people within the walls.

Harry sets down his paperwork on his desk, directly in front of the chair. He takes his seat and begins, flipping over the first few files and reading over the main reports.

Apparently, some ex-Death Eaters had threatened to kidnap Narcissa Malfoy in a drunken brawl with some other wizard who seems to have confessed to being attracted to Mrs. Malfoy. Files show that the other wizard had been in school some years while Narcissa was as well, and that there had been rumors when the two had been schoolmates at Hogwarts. The ex-Death Eaters had loudly declared their disgust, though being inebriated, might have only done so under the influence of alcohol.

But after what Narcissa had done, Harry understands why many Death Eaters would hate her, though she had not been a Death Eater herself.

The entire thing having happened late into the night and under deep influence of alcohol, the incident was not categorized as extremely important, especially that those involved ex-Death Eaters were not actually directly involved with Voldemort. They were those types that swayed very much, though ultimately believed in Voldemort just because they didn’t like anything else.

There is also a note that Narcissa Malfoy had been informed and that both she and Lucius wish for Harry to handle it, having gained the family’s trust through Narcissa who had faith in Harry.

Harry would never understand why Narcissa trusted him. But he didn’t mind. He would be dead if it wasn’t for her.

The in-depth files of the wizards involved would be much more lengthy, so after downing the last of his now cold coffee, Harry settles to read something else for a while. A change, he tells himself. Some kind of break. A breather from the case.

Harry already knows that he’ll have to interrogate the Death Eaters and the other wizard, though he doubts it’ll be anything serious. Probably just drunken pub drama of overly burdened people.

Maybe a little too much Firewhisky. A bad choice of company.

Bad luck on a cold night.

Harry opens the black notebook to his flower bookmark and continues reading.

> _A Four-Inch Wide, Nine-and-a-Half-Inch Long Oval Spot, About Three-Fourths of an Inch From The Fence_
> 
> _As I write this, I’m packing some of my things into an old rucksack Mum had given to me for school. Until now, I’ve put nothing else but school things into the bag, but as I gaze into it from my perch a foot away from my bed, it holds barely a book in it, carrying mostly clothes and other things I thought I’d need._
> 
> _I might need to learn how to steal if I can’t get a job. Besides, who would hire an ugly, scrawny, pathetic-looking elementary school kid? I am not going to find myself digging into someone’s trash bin, neither am I going to beg for my life._
> 
> _No, I’ll be living on my own. Or at least as good as I can manage._
> 
> _Behind my father’s back, Mum had already told me about magic and other witches and wizards and the magic school that would take me away when I’m eleven. So I thought, they’re magic, so they’ll find me anywhere I go. So this is okay._
> 
> _Mum told me magic has limits, rules, and restrictions. That didn’t mean my knowledge held those limits._
> 
> _Of all my things, the only not-so significant thing I’m packing is this notebook, and of course the ink and quill I would need to keep writing in it. Though I’m not likely to find myself writing as much after getting out of here, I suppose I might need some paper and ink some other times I can't think of._
> 
> _I’m running away. And it feels like the best thing I have ever thought of._

Harry remembers being a kid and wondering why he sticks around day after day of being treated like scum. Sometimes he tells himself because he doesn’t know any way around the world. But really, after all he’s had to do, after all he’s been through, he knew enough to survive out of the house long enough to grow older and get a job. Other times, he tells himself it’s because he’s weak and pathetic, but those are on the days Harry doesn’t like to dwell on.

As it is with Harry these days, he knows ignoring those memories would do him better. Memories of late nights under the stairs, just staring up the ceiling of his cupboard with all the dust on it, and the occasional insect that prowls in the dark.

When he dreamed about running away, it used to be the best thing he could ever imagined.

Until he found his way to Hogwarts.

> _I’m planning to leave tomorrow afternoon, when Dad is out and Mum is in their room reading or something. She won’t be coming out until she has to prepare dinner, and Dad rarely came home before midnight._
> 
> _The times he came home before midnight were usually much more catastrophic than otherwise, anyway._
> 
> _So by the time I write in this journal again, I might as well be hiding in an alleyway in London, or wherever it is I can walk before I get too tired. Maybe I’ll find my way to a wizard’s alley and wind up in the magical part of England, and I won’t have to be a poor runaway._
> 
> _When the sun rises tomorrow, I’ll have everything in the rucksack. By the time it sets, I’ll be far away from here._

The writing ends there, with at least a line more between the last sentence and the end of the page. Harry turns the page and finds the scrawl frantic, though the same familiar handwriting he’s come to know as Severus’, or as Severus has once called himself, the Half-Blood Prince’s.

When Harry begins to read, he realizes that this would have been written a while after the last bit, and maybe after something rather unsettling had happened which would never be revealed in the plain black ink.

There are places where the ink blurs, and the dried paper reveals drops of something. Whether it be tears or sweat, Harry doubts he’ll really ever know.

> _It occurs to me that maybe I shouldn’t have anticipated running away as much as I did. I was so ecstatic that my first step over the fence actually felt liberating. I didn’t even have my entire body out of the lot yet, and I had the audacity to be that excited._
> 
> _If hadn’t been so giddy about it all, maybe I’d have made it farther before my luck ran out._

Harry doesn’t need a next sentence or a next page or an entire narrative to know what happens next. The drops could’ve been tears and sweat, and Harry wouldn’t have minded, knowing well how it is.

Maybe young Severus thought feeling excited somehow rang magical alarm bells, and even if his father was a Muggle, young Severus must’ve thought it still plausible that Tobias could hear them.

> _Anyway, I’m back now, all unpacked. It’s about dawn, I suppose. To think that the last dawn before this one, I had envisioned myself somewhere else other than this rickety old place in this exact same spot, writing in this same old notebook with this same old quill and inkwell._
> 
> _At least I’m not digging in a garbage bag somewhere, for food. I tell myself that for comfort._
> 
> _I can tell from now on that every time I’ll be going over the fence to take a walk or throw the trash, I won’t be able to step in that spot anymore._
> 
> _If I step there again, he might come home too early again, and he might do what he did again._

Harry doesn’t need to read ‘and I don’t want that to happen’ to know the unsaid, or rather, unwritten. Harry closes the book as he inserts his flower bookmark between the yellowed pages, though worn and ruffled by scribbles and scribbles of heavy, wet ink. Before the writing was revealed, the notebook seemed so immaculate, so innocent.

Now, though, Harry thinks it quite the opposite.

Harry stands up from his seat and begins to walk around the room, hands burying themselves in his hair. His messy hair gets even more ruffled as he plays with the wayward strands, pushing them here and there until his mop of a head becomes even more of a mess than it usually is. He breathes in and breathes out, trying to clear his head.

When he returns to his seat, he decides to continue on with his work, making notes and such of the data on the files. So he slips the black notebook in a drawer and out of his sight for the time being before opening the files and drawing out his notepad.

He marvels at himself for having a Quick-Quotes quill, but he’s glad it’s Gryffindor red than acid green. Who would have ever thought that the one quill he hated as a Hogwarts student would be the quill he’d end up using for work?

He brings the tip up to his lips. He tries to clear his mind one last time, letting one last thought linger before commencing into work.

“Victim-to-be: Narcissa Malfoy neé Black.” And the quill writes it down on Harry’s notepad.


	11. Flora

‘ _Person of Interest: Narcissa Malfoy née Black_ ’

‘ _Suspects: Argyros Flint, Gryphon Fawley, Magnum Burke._ ’

‘ _Situation: Drunken brawl at Phoenix Pints and Shots. Possible kidnapping of Mrs. Malfoy._ ’

‘ _Report: Argyros Flint and Gryphon Fawley were reported to have initiated a drunken brawl at Phoenix Pints and Shots in Gawsworth, Cheshire, with Magnum Burke. Earlier that night, Burke had drunkenly confessed to still having romantic inclinations toward Mrs. Malfoy, which Flint and Fawley overheard. This initiated Flint and Fawley’s ramble about Mrs. Malfoy being ‘the fall of the Cause’, which eventually led to Burke sending a horribly aimed silencing spell at Flint and Fawley while Fawley simultaneously sent an unknown hex at Burke. (The hex was possibly a half-formed mix of other hexes caused by Fawley’s state of inebriation.) When several witches and wizards put a stop to the drunken brawl and before Jordan Grunt, owner of the pub, was able to send the three out, Flint and Fawley swore to kidnap Mrs. Malfoy on the pretense of a grudge._ ’

‘ _Argyros Flint and Gryphon Fawley are both ex-Death Eaters who defected between the First and Second Wizarding War though ultimately rejoined the Death Eaters during the Second Wizarding War. Magnum Burke was a year below Narcissa Malfoy (née Black) in their Hogwarts years._ ’

Harry partially blames himself for this. If Narcissa hadn’t saved his life, she wouldn’t be the center of attention here—

—But she’d done it for Draco, not _him_ , not Harry, because _not everything is about Harry Potter, not from the fucking start_ —

—And Harry feels a surge of hate for Draco, for that bastard, making Harry’s Hogwarts years living hell just because Draco was the son of some pureblood asshole, calling Hermione ‘mudblood’ and whatnot—

—But without Draco, Narcissa would have never saved Harry’s life, and Harry feels a surge of disgust for himself, especially after making amends with Draco though rather loosely. Once again, Harry feels the bile in his stomach trying to force itself up his throat; he reminds himself they all made decisions and all their decisions had pro’s and con’s. Not one choice was perfect, and not one choice didn’t have repercussions.

It was a war.

It wasn’t his fault.

And he tries to tell himself that over and over again, but it seems to always lead to the same haunting thought: ‘Voldemort resurrected himself to get rid of you.’

Harry shakes his head. Not today. Not today.

Having been preoccupied with the files for the past couple of days, Harry realizes that he hasn’t opened the black notebook in two days. His fingers itch to hold the cover open again, to flip through the pages and run his fingertips down the ink-stained pages. But, as it is, he is preoccupied these days, and he thanks his work as an Auror for being such a priority and keeping him from going down a path with consequential thoughts.

Although he could simply take a Portkey to Gawsworth, Harry opts to get there by train, reasoning that the Portkey might lead to a destination with an unsuspecting Muggle passing by. Harry being Harry, his Head Auror agreed immediately; and so despite the time it takes to ride a train, Harry goes for a train to Cheshire leaving at 3:15 pm.

In the inside pockets of his coat, he tucked in his notepad, quill, and Tracker, his wand holster Disillusioned and a magically hidden pocket keeping the black notebook from prying eyes, whether magical or non-magical.

“Train to Cheshire at Platform 10.” The announcer speaks. Harry walks through the strings and crowds of people and over by the red brick post, feeling the world fly by him as if he is the one stagnancy in a world of movement. He feels so disconnected, so unattached; but isn’t that a good thing? So that when he gets to his job, it will be unproblematic?

Although it’s been a few years, his name is still a household name and his face still known by any and all wizards and witches. Most of his connections in the wizarding world have been broadcasted more than once or twice over wizarding radio stations and sometimes simply passed on (and very accurately, Harry likes to note) by word of mouth. So for this assignment he dyed his hair a dirty blonde, cutting it an inch shorter than usual, and he wore black contacts to cover his mother’s emerald eyes.

With Ginny’s help, he altered his face in the most miniscule manner, making him less and less recognizable as the famous Harry Potter.

When he talked about the assignment to Ginny, she had agreed with him that Muggle make-up should be better at hiding his identity than magical anything. So they followed up on that plan.

Harry tries not to think about how wistful Ginny’s eyes became, about how her eyes shone with their early days, about how her hazel irises seemed to replay passed days from long ago, long before they left Hogwarts and long before Harry defeated Voldemort. Harry tries not to remember, either, the underlying pain Ginny tries to hide, the pain that Harry himself caused because of a chance meeting all those months ago.

Harry blames himself. Harry blames the world. But Harry thanks the cool violet hue of the train screeching to a stop, reflecting to him his disguise and reminding him that, for a day at least, he won’t completely be Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Lived.

He boards the train and find a seat, relishing the black leather seats that remind him oh so much of a specific shadow of black haunting him in the form of billowing robes and greasy curtain-fall hair.

Harry chooses a rather isolated part of the train, and after all the passengers board with no one asking to sit anywhere near him, the train’s engine roars and the wheels begin to turn. Harry settles in his seat and pulls out the black notebook from his pocket, opening it to read just as the cityscape begins to fade from the frame of the window.

> _A Crumpled Flower_
> 
> _I had gone over to watch that witch again. She should be about my age, really. Such a shame that she has a wretched Muggle for a sister; such people don’t have proper appreciation for magic! I can see it in the Muggle’s eyes: she’s jealous of her sister’s magic!_
> 
> _But anywho, enough about the Muggle. There’s nothing special about her. The special one’s the witch. The one who’s like me._
> 
> _She has long red hair, like a really bright fire. It occurs to me I have never written about her before, maybe because she became the only good memory left in these places. And I reckon she still will be, even after today. Anyway, she has really bright red hair, the kind that becomes nearly blinding in the summer sun._
> 
> _When I say nearly blinding, it’s the kind of bright that can be seen from yards and yards away, that kind of attracts people toward it like the moth to a flame. But she isn’t like a flame. She won’t burn anyone that comes close to her._
> 
> _She also has really bright green eyes, and almond shaped eyes at that. Her eyes were big and bright, but sculpted kind of big so that it didn’t look like pupils behind magnifying glasses. Her green eyes defeated even the green of the summer grass, and I have never known anything as pleasantly green as the dewy summer grass._
> 
> _Anyway, she had been in the playground with her sister, swinging. She swung higher and higher, and contrary to the Muggle telling her not to, the witch-girl used magic! She let herself fly off the swing and gracefully fell down, lightly on her feet._
> 
> _Just as I’d expected. She already masters her magic like a pro._
> 
> _Mum said witches and wizards aren’t allowed to use magic when Muggles are around, especially when they’re underage. But when we’re below eleven years old, it’s still okay._
> 
> _I wouldn’t do it for as long as my Dad were around._

Harry remembers that day in the zoo, the first time he was actually allowed to go anywhere that didn’t involve an errand for the Dursleys. He remembers having one blink of an eye to laugh, one breath to smile; and then it all went downhill from there that day.

He wouldn’t do it for as long as he didn’t know where to run either.

Harry watches the hillside roll past his window, the snow-capped green of the landscape blurring with the white-covered blue of the sky. The worn pages and swirls of ink, though, were in sharp focus.

His green eyes behind black contact lenses remain steady on the page.

> _Anyway, so, the witch-girl began heading for my bush, and although I could have gotten caught, I decided it was unlikely. What interesting thing would she see to make her want to investigate the bush anyway?_
> 
> _Just as I guessed, it wasn’t the bush she found interesting, but a flower that fell near it._
> 
> _The flower sat on her palm, and like the magical pro she is, she let the petals open and close, like a dancing flower._
> 
> _The Muggle got freaked out, obviously, and wanted to make the Lily stop. Lily, of course, didn’t stop so soon. This actually made the Muggle show her true colors: jealousy. Because magic is much better than being a Muggle, and I’m sure the Muggle knew that too._
> 
> _“How do you do it?” The Muggle—Petunia is her name, I think—asked Lily._
> 
> _I stepped out from the bushes, tired of it all, because this Muggle named Petunia ultimately irritates me, if I were to be honest._
> 
> _And I said, “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”_
> 
> _And Lily said, “What’s obvious?”_
> 
> _I was startled for a moment, then I remembered: she doesn’t know I’m a wizard, neither does she know who I am._
> 
> _Better if she knew I was a wizard, but not who I am, but snotty little Petunia had to enlighten Lily. And so what if I’m from Spinner’s End? ~~It’s not my fault I ended up in that rubbish little street in that rubbish little home with a rubbish Dad!~~_

Harry could see it. The momentary pause for a calming breath. The few seconds just before the last sentence was crossed out, as Severus probably hadn’t known about Vanishing spells yet back then.

> _Lily tried to keep her identity from me, but she ultimately didn’t have to. Snot-tunia pulled her away just in time, and all I was left with was a crumpled flower on the ground._
> 
> _I kept that flower. I magically embedded it into the cover of the notebook._
> 
> _But now I can’t seem to get it back out._

The picture of a Severus not knowing how to reverse his own magic makes Harry smile. So unlike Severus, and yet it actually is.

> _At least if I smell hard enough, I can smell the flower on the cover._

With a finger in place to mark the page, Harry closes the notebook and puts the cover up close to his nose. The leather touches his nose like a lover’s caress, feeling of cotton and leather and sweetness. When he closes his eyes, he could faintly smell the scent of a flower mixed with old leather and old times.

Harry takes a deep breath in, and lets his thoughts consume him. Severus. Severus. Harry thinks of Severus’ gentle kisses, of how carefully Severus cradles him in those arms, He thinks of the greasy way Severus’ hair slips through his fingers, the soft way Severus’ lips pressed against his own.

Harry remembers the copper lighting in the bar, with Ginny gone from home and a free night on his hands. He remembers the golden filters from the bourbon bottles and whiskey shots and the glints of light from glasses and ice cubes. He remembers the shadow flitting in and out of the crowd, and the uncharacteristic way his heart skipped at the sight.

Disbelief. And yet, the impossible has proven itself to be incredibly likely at times.

Harry remembers old memories, old feelings, new feelings; everything was drowned with alcohol, sinking to the bottom of a bottomless pit with nothing but a name floating on the surface.

_“Severus.”_

Harry feels his heart warm at the thought. For once, after all these years, his thoughts were silenced. For once, Harry feels himself really, genuinely, truly smile, his eyes closed and his nose pressed against the rough leather cover of Severus’ notebook, a faint scent of a flower mixing with the timely scent of the cover.

When Harry opens his eyes again, he lets a tear slip. His lips are curved up, and suddenly the scenery ceases to be a blur of green and blue and white. He sees the rolling snowy hills, dotted with patches of rich loam brown and vibrant emerald green, and he sees the dove-white sky with streaks of widespread brown wings, strokes of blue cotton giving a song for the heavens to sing.

Harry slips his flower bookmark into the last page of the notebook, and tucks the leather-clad pages in the magically hidden pocket in his coat.

For the remainder of the trip, Harry is at peace. The world is quiet, but the harmonious kind of quiet that seems to sing odes and serenades in the undertones of serene silence.

* * *

Harry awakens to the sight of concrete platforms and crowds of moving people. No longer is the landscaping zooming; it’s people instead. Harry shakes himself awake (and he realizes the lack of nightmares and tiredness, and again, he smiles to himself) and collects himself before standing up from his seat.

It seems the train had nearly emptied itself when Harry got off as only a few passengers climbed down after Harry before the train began filling up again. The last of the passengers Harry rode with that he saw climb down was a quartet: two older siblings and two younger. They looked like all was right in the world, though like their world is somewhere else. And Harry thinks himself the same: in this moment, Harry feels the world’s pieces fall into place. But he knows his world is somewhere else, waiting to be found.

More than ever, Harry feels he needs to find Severus.

Revelling in the reverie from his chaotic thoughts, Harry walks onward and out of the station, out into the open air where he heads to his place of business, or rather wherever Magnum Burke would be.

The air smells of snow only beginning to thaw, flowers only starting to push themselves to bloom, trees only finishing their hibernation from the bite of the cold. Harry slips into an alley and holds his coat open, flicking his wrist up and around as an object lifts up from the inside of his coat and, at a breath, disappear.

The Disillusioned object floats out of reach of Harry’s coat and out of the alley. Harry lets his coat fall closed as he walks out of the alley and follows the Tracker leading to, first of all, Magnum Burke.


	12. Beside

The crack of Apparition interrupts the silence in a small countryside property. The snow crunches beneath Harry’s feet just as he lands in the snow-capped serenity, a farm dog jumping in and out of the snow about a yard away.

A meter from where the dog continues to jump in the snow, a man stands with his mouth wide open in laughter. From the outside, he doesn’t look like much: a thick woolen sweater and thick winter pants, a hand-knit scarf wrapped around his neck and a bronze and blue bonnet covering the top of his head.

His whiting copper hair peaks out from beneath the bonnet. His ice-blue eyes gleam bright like the snow. Harry walks the yard between them, hands tucked deep in his coat pockets while marvelling at the infinitesimal green peeking out miles and miles away.

“A wonder, isn’t it? The feeling when winter is fading and you see the smallest hints of spring? Li’l Cody here loves it, don’t you, Cody?” The man says to Harry without sparing him a glance, those ice-blue eyes reserved with warmth for the dog bounding over with utmost enthusiasm.

“You’ve got an energetic dog there.” Harry says, nearing the man and his dog. “I bet he’s even better in the summer months.”

“Well, that’s his moment.” The man stands back up from his crouch to ruffle through the dog’s fur, and then faces Harry fully. “So, what questions does the Ministry have for me?”

The casual warmth on Harry’s face falls ever so slightly. Business, of course.

It would be no doubt that this man could tell of the sudden magic in the air. He was a Ravenclaw, after all.

At the lower right of the front of his bonnet, a small ‘R’ is embroidered amidst the bronze and blue colors.

“Mister Magnum Burke, at forty-seven years of age, graduate of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Ravenclaw, renowned for his innate skill and talent for the most unexpected and unrelated things,” Harry pauses, looking Burke in the eye as he spoke. “Why don’t we talk about this inside, with a cup of tea?”

“I agree, sir, I agree.” Burke nods, the warmth tampered down in his eyes. His hand pets the head of the dog and leads it back to the humble little home in the middle of the property. “C’mon, Cody, c’mon boy. Let’s get you warm again.”

Burke receives Harry into his home with utmost warmth, though underlying tension, and while Cody the Dog bounds over to a quilt-covered basket by the fireplace, Harry is led to a small kitchen counter where Burke begins to make tea.

“So, what questions do I have to answer?”

“You were quite inebriated, weren’t you?” Harry starts, watching Burke make tea with evident years in his bones and tendons.

“Quite, quite. As you can see, I have no wife and no hope in getting one, especially now that I’ve so publicly confessed to _still_ having a schoolboy crush on Narcissa Black.” Burke turns to Harry while the pot begins to boil on the stove. “But she’s married these days, isn’t she? To Lucius Malfoy, with a son named Draco?”

“Yes, she is.” Harry tries not to let his emotions seep in, in fear of some things and other things—all those things he wishes not to dwell on, especially here.

“Well. Truth be told, I simply can’t find a woman who captivated me as much as she did. Maybe it’s because of how high she holds her chin, or how she looks like anywhere she steps is a path of royalty. But I’d like to think I liked her as a sixth year boy because she was the first person I ever saw who juxtaposed herself; she looks ice-cold and yet, vulnerable, she’s like an ice cube that just melts.

“She intrigued me. No one else was as intriguing. And, as I would be, I found no one else as mind-boggling. And I like mysteries, and she was one of them. But I know she wouldn’t be the type to look for adventure when she has an entire detailed path laid down in front of her.”

As the pot began to boil, Burke turns around and takes it. He pours the tea into two cups and hands one to Harry.

“But I was never interested in her views. I didn’t see the point in pureblood supremacy; purebloods and half-bloods and muggleborns and muggles are all the same to me. The difference comes from what they have here,” and he taps his head, which many know he values more than anything, “and here.” He presses his hand against his chest, a soft gesture, solemn more than when he tapped his head.

“So you simply held an interest in her as a personality, but not her as the entirety of herself?” Harry takes a sip of the tea, and he notes the pleasant feeling of warm heat on his tongue amidst the cold. The fireplace crackles and a warm air flits around the small space, dispelling bits of biting cold.

“Yes, I guess I did. She left a big impact on me either way, but not explicitly as Narcissa Black, now Malfoy.” Burke takes a sip of his own tea, relishing the warmth it gave. “But I can’t say I didn’t begin to find her stunning after. It somewhat follows after getting interested in how someone is.”

Harry nods in agreement, sipping at his tea in the silence of the home, Cody the Dog now calmly asleep in the basket of quilts.

* * *

The crack of Apparition mingles with the noise in the main room of Phoenix Pints and Shots. Harry exits the establishment and finds himself on a just as busy street, filled with muggles and wizards alike for any and all reasons under the afternoon daylight.

By a tree, he finds two burly men with faded tattoos on their left forearm, one with a green bonnet and black hair, the other with spiked silver-tipped hair.

“Mister Argyros Flint? Mister Gryphon Fawley?” Harry calls out in proximity, just close enough to be heard by only the two and far enough out of reach. He gets their attention, half-lazy and half-irritated glares finding their way over to Harry. “May I talk to you?”

“Well, you’re already talkin’. I reckon you’re either from the Ministry or some other man who’s conspiring about a Malfoy kidnapping by the two of us.”

“The answer is no, we ain’t plannin’ to kidnap the Mrs. Malfoy.” Fawley then looks back to the muggle-visible establishment with a slightly longing look in his eyes. Harry thinks he probably misses the alcohol he now can’t reach. “Even if we could, we wouldn’t bet on trying. We aren’t as in power, and even if we’d get support from other former Death Eaters, they’d call us hypocrites when we, ourselves, defected between the two Wars.”

Flint continues the statement, still looking at Harry, unlike his partner. “As much as we could mention how those other Death Eaters are just as hypocritical, that won’t help any movement, so that would be a pretty stupid business to try to run.

“So no, don’t worry about it. We aren’t kidnapping a Mrs. Malfoy anytime soon. Or anytime, actually. We’d rather find a way to be welcome in Phoenix again.”

“Yep. So go on your merry way; nothin’ interestin’ ‘round here.”

“Yep, thanks.” Harry bows his head in thanks, turns, and walks away from the pair leaning on the trunk of the tree in the middle of the courtyard. Now that the first phase of his field mission was over, he’d just have two more things to do.

That would span the rest of the week, but if their faces were anything to go by, the situation was just as it is: an incredibly drunken brawl by a bunch of heavily inebriated people in the middle of the night in a populated pub.

Harry decides to settle in a rather unpopulated area a little away from the wizard pub and finds a bench he leans back on. He pulls out a black leather notebook from his coat pockets and opens to the page marked by his flower bookmark.

> _A Spot Beside Me At The Bottom Of The Tree_
> 
> _Lily and I had gone to our favorite spot again today, in the shade of that tree by the stream._
> 
> _I haven’t written too much because, well, I’ve been spending more days than not actually happy._

Harry could feel the elation Severus felt, the hope radiating off the less and less despondent scrawl on the ink-stained notebook. Harry felt himself smile, his eyelids softly covering his eyes with the image of the tree in his mind.

The tree. The tree he saw in Severus’ memories. 

> _It was a bright summer day today, and the sunlight was streaming through the small gaps between the leaves hanging off the branches of the tree. It was like glitter expect brighter. A lot more like rays than reflection._
> 
> _I sat with Lily with our backs against the trunk and faces up toward the sky. Everything was right in the world, here, in our favorite spot._
> 
> _No Mum and Dad to worry about, and no Petunia for her to busy herself with._
> 
> _It was just me and her._

Harry can see the playful rays of light streaming down the foliage, peeking through gaps between leaves and hanging piles of snow. Harry can nearly feel the cool warmth of late winter sunlight, and can nearly feel the crunch of snow beneath his fingertips.

When he opens his eyes, he sits right where he imagines Severus to have sat all those years ago. 

> _We talked about a lot of things, every other time we were there. Just today, when we were there, we talked about so many things that I couldn’t really keep track. We could have been talking about Hogwarts yesterday and I’d think it was today._
> 
> _With Lily, every day feels the same. Like a drawn out dream that I never want to wake up from._
> 
> _After everything, I think this is my reward. She certainly looks like an angel._
> 
> _But jokes aside, she certainly could be one. An angel. She’s too kind and too beautiful to not be. She’s too pure, too innocent. I’d want to protect her from anything that would try to hurt her._
> 
> _Maybe I can. After all, it’s a wizarding school for wizard children. Maybe I’d be better of there, not so much of an oddball anymore. Maybe I’d have better-looking clothes or something, and no matter what, I’d have Lily with me anyway._
> 
> _I felt her hand only inches from mine today. I would’ve held it, put mine on top of hers, but I think that’s for another time, for a better time._
> 
> _Maybe when my clothes aren’t so shabby and my hair isn’t that greasy and when I don’t look so ugly, then I’ll hold her hand._
> 
> _For now, all I have is a spot under the tree with her. The spot beside me is hers. And with the light from between the leaves up there, I think it can warrant as close enough to heaven._

Harry could feel young Severus’ smile as he wrote, and Harry finds himself mirroring the expression.

The proximity to Severus’ special places hit a chord in Harry’s heart; he needs to be closer to him. Harry leans back his head and presses his back onto the aged wood, and despite the layer of snow threatening to freeze his bottom and keeping him apart from the summer soil, Harry closes his eyes and could nearly feel Severus with him.

Harry takes a deep breath in, then releases it. Getting up, Harry sets forth for the small town of Cokeworth, into the monotone street of Spinner’s End.

Closer, Harry thinks. It’s the only way he can get closer to Severus, to anything of his, whether or not this will lead anywhere.


	13. Flower

Harry listens to the way the snow crunches beneath his boots, the horizon filtered through the frosty winter air in this red-bricked neighborhood of Spinner’s End.

On either side of the street, the buildings are built up with the same bricks with the same shade of old, red bricks, some buildings lucky enough to have had some cleaning enough to clear the grime off of the cracks in the walls. Some windows were marked with big, taped X’s, showing empty, dark spaces behind them. Others had windows hanging open, glass mostly knocked out of the frames if not for the small, fatal shards sticking closely to the wood and steel window frames.

Despite the many stories painted up on each and every door, Harry thinks that the entire neighborhood looked like it was all the same; all the buildings and all the doors built from one plan, sold like an apartment with a uniform look on all of the doors, walls, and windows. All the same, and Harry would bet, sold at the price of something made and sold without customizing.

He even guesses that the bookcases and furniture, and even the porcelain and silverware came with the shabby houses too. No wonder Severus hated it.

Then again, Severus had more reasons to hate the neighborhood than what it looked like.

Seeing as there was no one else who would’ve fit the description, Severus Snape’s old home was now in the legal ownership of Harry James Potter. So Harry stepped off of the streets and onto the couple of steps, whispering with a subtle wave of his wand from its holster.

“ _Alohomora_.”

The locks click, and Harry grasps the knob and steps inside. He listens to the locks click back into place as he pushes the door closed with his foot, breathing in the place as the light from the outside is cut off and plunges him into dim dampness.

Over there was the kitchen, beyond the doorway just a couple of inches smaller than Harry. And all around were the bookcases, filled to the brim with books of every hue and every color, though faded by time and usage (though Harry wondered if most of those books were actually even touched, unless Severus had thrown all the old ones away). And there, in the middle, was the couch of a faded Slytherin green, where Harry could almost see Severus sitting.

Harry takes a tentative step forward. It feels like he’s intruding, but he isn’t, but the entire place feels like Severus as if Severus is upstairs, but he isn’t here and—

Harry turns around and lets himself sit down, slowly, carefully, on the couch in which he could nearly feel Severus’ presence. To his left is a fireplace with silver baubles staring off from the top: a cup and a figurine and various other decorations that made the home look a little less cold, a little more like a place to live in than a place to find reprieve.

Harry slips his wand out and sends a small fire burning in the hearth. No one would notice another smoking chimney now, would they?

The fire crackles and the logs pop. The silence is filled with the warmth of a flame and the darkness now dances with orange light, shadows of a time long gone playing around in the far corners and crevices of hallways and bookcases. Harry closes his eyes and lets the darkness devour his sight, because what is there to see? Instead, he can feel the warmth of slim fingers sliding down his arms while greasy, black hair drapes over his shoulders.

“ _Potter,_ ” the echo of a ghost whispers in Harry’s ear, and he could almost hear the voice he’s looking for in the silence of the long abandoned house. “ _what are you doing so far from home?_ ”

Torn shirts and torn undercoats. Thrown pants and hurled socks and shucked socks and underwear. Flesh against flesh, hot in the darkness of the night. Gasps, moans, needy groans. The strong scent of alcohol and sex. Pulsing, gliding, penetrating.

Hot breaths, sweaty skin, humid air.

Harry gasps and snaps his eyes back open, trying to calm down the strain between his legs. He stares into the fire and feels his heart calm, calm down from its high and calm down his racing breaths, though his heartbeat becomes heavier, slower, and more painful.

He feels his breathing shake, not because of the memory of that night, but because of the hollowness in his chest as if his heart was ripped right out, veins torn and soul shredded. His eyes glisten with the orange glow, though he feels the warmth as if from another body, knowing the only real warmth for him is the warmth he can no longer feel.

Unless he can find Severus.

Though, sometimes too much hope is futile. Motivating, but painful.

Too painful for his weak heart to bear.

Harry runs his fingers through his hair and pushes himself up. In his coat pocket, the black notebook weighs him down.

Harry opens the door leading up the stairs and onto the second floor. He lets his feet rest on each step carefully, as if the slightest noise would wake the entire neighborhood up. He feels his heart beating in his chest, and it throbs inside of him like a wound begging to be tended to, a gash pleading to be sewn closed.

Up, and through the doorway leading onto the second floor. A humble hallway, with two doors. Harry opens the door on the right, and sure enough, there is a bed and dusty floorboards. Except for one.

_The Only Perfect Floorboard._

Harry approaches it. Slowly, he crouches over it until it's shrouded in his towering shadow. Carefully, he brings up his hand towards it. He lets his palm hover over it, fingers hanging over the floorboard untouched after all these years.

_Maybe Severus put a charm on it so it never gets dirtied._

But Harry’s fingertips brush over it, ever slightly, like a lover’s tentative kiss. Although he feels his veins rush with Severus’ words, as if to connect them with the past written down in age old ink, he feels no other magic than the magic of the floorboard for young Severus.

Harry pushes himself back up and exits the room, softly closing the door behind him. He looks up at the ceiling and gets drawn to the corner, on the other side of the hallway all the way at its end.

_The Peeling Ceiling Wallpaper._

After all these years, bits of the wallpaper had gone. Either eaten by rats or gnawed on by termites.

Harry turns around and walks the small distance to the stairway. He lightly descends the steps in the near-darkness illuminated by nothing but his meek fireplace flame. No longer did his eyes look like they were shone over and dull, and no longer did he feel like his heart was gone.

Piece by piece, the hole is getting filled in the darkness lit only by the small flame.

Harry opens the door at the bottom of the stairs and finds himself back in the living room. The shadows cease to look ominous and foreboding. Instead, the fire feels warmer, the orange glow brighter and seeping deeper into the shadows.

There are no ghosts out to kill him, and he finds his mind quite silent.

He steps off of the stairs and into the living room, closing the stair door behind him. He rounds the bookcases, walking closer and closer to the fire. The warmth feels like it’s thawing ice on his fingertips, and he feels his heart losing the numbing sensation he’s known it so well for. Between two bookcases is a gap, where he wedges half his body between to see behind the bookcase farther from the fireplace. He lets slip some light from the fire, casting a soft orange glow that sends a glint from a glass shard.

_A Stray Shard From A Bottle Of Firewhisky._

Harry finds himself caressing it with the tip of his finger. Maybe it’s just his eyes, but he swears the fire is growing brighter and warmer.

He pulls away from the niche between the bookcases and scans up and down the shelves. At the bottom row, a few steps away from the niche, he sees the spine of a battered book. It has stains and rips of a story long over, and Harry doesn’t touch it, but simply stares at it in earnest.

_The Magician’s Nephew._

Harry runs his eyes down the battered spine, feeling the young Severus in the remembrances left in the secrecy of these places in plain sight.

His feet push him back up, turning his back to the bookcases and setting his eyes to the kitchen. He ducks to get through the doorway and marvels at the faded teal walls and aged kitchen cabinets. There is no longer any plates at the sink, not for a long time now, but Harry can see the woman who would have been hunched over it, watched by the child from a seat on the dining table for three.

Though, of course, it was usually only for two.

Harry ducks beneath the table, and finds his remembrance well-preserved, as if by magic.

_A One-by-One Square Inch of Grime._

Harry pushes himself on his hands and reaches for the grime with the tip of his shoe. He pushes against it, and the ghost of a smile paints itself on his lips.

_Nope. That grime is never coming off._

He stands back up and out of the kitchen, scans the living room quickly before going out back.

Harry thinks he’s never felt himself smile like this for a few years now.

The backyard has overgrown, and though it would take the swipe of a wand to clear it all, Harry doesn’t bother. He simply walks around the overgrown hedges and keeps his path on the shorter blades of grass, the snow crunching beneath his feet as he walks forward. Forward, and over to the rickety fence that looks like it could collapse at a mere touch.

Beyond the fence, Harry sees a patch of grass that has become suppressed; at least a couple of inches shorter than the rest. And, Harry thinks, it could have been touched by purposeful magic, but just as much it could have been the doing of a child with wayward power.

Harry turns to go back inside, the frosty bite of the outdoors pushing him away from the cold winter weather and into the crackle of the fireplace.

He steps back in and settles his coat on the coat rack by the front door. He feels his finger warmer just by the proximity to the flames. Slipping his wand out of its holster, he turns the armchair to face the fireplace before setting himself down and sitting on the warm, soft cushions.

When Harry closes his eyes, he sees no ghost of corpses long dead, nor lost loves and broken promises. He simply sees the back of his eyelids while his heart beats anew, with neither burden nor numbness.

In the warmth of that home in Spinner’s End, Harry falls asleep with nothing haunting him.

* * *

Beyond the heavily curtained windows, the night could be boasting of bright white stars, twinkling in the darkness like jewels embroidered in dark, dark velvet, or the sun could be peeking out from between small crevices between frosty white clouds. Whether the sun had or is setting, or had or is rising, Harry could only see the darkness from this side of the heavily curtained windows, deep inside the home in the center of the living room.

His flame had long been embers, he thinks, feeling his body stretch out after what feels like the longest, most rested sleep he has ever felt since long, long ago, back when he was a young and new Hogwarts student.

Harry rests his head on the top of the armchair and watches the embers eat at the remains of the firewood. Small little flames volatile by their own volition, sparks smaller than fingertips igniting bit by bit of the remaining wood and turning it into ashes.

He smiles, and he feels the sparks at his fingertips, warm and there and _alive_ , and after so long he feels finally, finally alive.

His stomach grumbles and he laughs, softly laughs, and he can almost hear Severus cheeky snark with the words, “ _Come on, Potter. Wouldn’t want the Chosen One to starve to death, now would we?_ ”

Would Severus give him that same cheek after Harry find him?

Harry pushes away the impending low, needing to revel in this warmth a little longer. Respecting the wishes of his (mentally created, dreamed, fantasized) Severus, he gets up and slips his coat back on, slipping out onto the Spinner’s End streets and walking off to the next neighborhood.

When Harry walks, he realizes it is early in the morning. Vestiges of the rising sun peek through the dark shroud of the night sky, mixing red, orange, and yellow with blue and gray, creating strokes of lavender and pink, and spots of scarlet on the sky.

It’s beautiful. On the lawns on Harry’s side, the dark green of the grass blends beautifully with the dancing sky.

The world is breathing. And, after so long, Harry realizes that so is he.

Breathing.

Surviving.

Living.

Harry steps off the road and onto a playground, on the side of a street where Spinner’s End and the rest of Cokeworth meet. Harry walks through the lot, passed the swings and the slide, over to the bush on the other side. He stands there and turns back around, back around to face the playground and the road he had been walking on. The past years may have changed this place, but Harry’s knows it’s still the same. The same playground where Severus had spied on Lily and Petunia Evans, the same playground where Lily Evans and Severus Snape had first met. The same playground where Harry had found himself in when he dived into Severus’ memories, a long time ago, where Severus had been left with a crumpled flower at his feet after Lily and Petunia left.

_The Crumpled Flower._

In his coat pocket, Harry carries the notebook that bears that flower, its leather cover still smelling of the flower Lily Evans had left Severus Snape with years and years ago.

Harry walks back and onto the road, pushing forward toward the higher end of town.

Where his mother grew up.

He walks the streets and looks left and right, both observing and scanning. Observing and watching as he drinks it all in, the neighborhood, much better off than Spinner’s End with homes obviously not built then sold, no window looking cheap and no car looking at least three decades old and third-hand. And scanning, scanning and looking for a place where he could eat, as Harry’s stomach has continued growling ever since he stood up and off the couch in Severus’ living room.

Conveniently, Harry finds a small shop opening up in the imminent dawn. At its front, the shop owner struggles to push up the metal closings and finally open up shop. Harry comes to the owner’s aid and helps push up, and so the metal closings fold back.

“Thank you, lad, for the help.” The owner says, smiling at Harry, and Harry feels a human warmth take over him at the sound of someone’s—not friend or acquaintance or client or suspect or witness, nor boss or co-worker or ex-rival—voice. A stranger, and yet still someone’s voice.

“No problem.” Harry smiles, and he thinks he stares for a moment too long when he realizes the weird look the owner is beginning to give him. “Um, I was just looking for a shop to eat some breakfast in. I’m not so good at cooking so I thought—“

“Oh yes, yes! Right over here, right over here.” The owner takes Harry by the shoulders and ushers him right in. Harry shyly complies, sitting down at a corner booth right by the shop window. “Now just wait, alright? I’ll have you a breakfast ready in no time. Want some coffee with it, too?”

“Oh, yes please.” Harry says, and the owner smiles at Harry before going and slipping behind the counter and past the door behind it, off into the kitchen.

The dim early morning light feels like the right time for Harry, so he slips the notebook out of his coat and opens it to the next entry he has to read.

> _A Lily_
> 
> _Today’s the day before Lily and I go to Hogwarts. The day before everything changes for us. This time tomorrow, we’ll have met other kids like ourselves and we’ll be dressed in our Hogwarts robes. We’ll be a long way away from Cokesworth, and I’ll be a long way away from this house._
> 
> _I’ve got my wand and some books that Mum had given me. I have to confess that I feel envy for Lily, since while my books are battered and already used, hers is brand new and clean and perfect. Then again, she has no one to give her a hand-me-down. Her parents aren’t wizards._
> 
> _Even if her parents aren’t, I know she’ll make an amazing witch. Probably the best in her year._
> 
> _And I’ll be the brains beside her. Not a pretty boy, not like those witless wonders in Muggle school, and we’ll be amazing together._
> 
> _Anyway, we had met up again today, and we had decided to walk around instead of staying in our regular place. Just like her, I was bursting with energy._
> 
> _“A smile looks really great on you, Sev.” She had told me while we were walking around._
> 
> _I guess I’ll be smiling more often now, but just for her._
> 
> _We walked and talked for as long as the sun was still up, and by the time we felt the air getting colder for the night, we had walked passed our regular spot at least four times and walked very, very far from it. Being a little tired myself, I asked her if she wanted to go home already. She agreed, though not before doing something before leaving._
> 
> _I wondered what she wanted to do first, then she pulled me over to a bush we had passed a few times on our walk around the place. There, she plucked two flowers from the bush, giving one to me and keeping one for herself._
> 
> _“It’s a lily!” She had said. “It’ll be our good luck charm for tonight.”_
> 
> _Her smile made me smile back, and for once I didn’t try to hide it. We walked back together, and I went on home and clutched the lily in my hand. I didn’t want anyone else to see it. Not Mum, or Dad, or anyone in the neighborhood._
> 
> _It was my good luck lily, from Lily._
> 
> _And it worked. Tonight was good, and I know that for as long as I have this flower, nothing bad will happen to me._

“Breakfast?” The shop owner had come back from the kitchen, now with a tray full of food.

“Oh, thank you, thank very much.” Harry then proceeds to help the shop owner settle the plates and silverware off the tray and on the table. “How much is it?”

“Since you’re the first customer, I’ll make it just a pound.” The owner winks at Harry, and Harry smiles in return before handing a pound.

Harry thinks he can get used to this warm feeling, and as the shop owner leaves to go back behind the counter, Harry shoves some food into his mouth, revelling in the delicious smell and the savory taste in his mouth.

Last night was good and, he thinks, for as long as he keeps this warmth inside of him, nothing bad will happen to him.


End file.
